I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. I 



#|l«P- |°P"gM ]Jfo f 

{ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. | 

m 



THE 

PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 



FROM 



ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 



THE 



Patriarchal Dynasties 



FROM 



ADAM TO ABRAHAM, 



SHOWN TO COVER 10,500 YEARS, AND THE 
I HIGHEST HUMAN LIFE ONLY 187. 



Hit. T. p. CRAWFORD, 

or Txnm chow, china. 




y/(f^<^ A 



RICHMOND, VA.: 

JOSIAH RYLAND & CO., 913 MAIN STREET, 
1877. 



^1 

C7 



^^^ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the Year 1877, 

By JOSIAH RYLAND & CO., 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C 



Whittet & Shepperson, 

Printers, Richmond, Va. 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 
Inteoduotion, 5 

CHAPTEE I. 

The Length of Life according to the Antediluvian Table of 

Genesis ; Average age, 120 years, . . . .11 

CHAPTER II. 

The Length of Life according to the Postdiluvian Table ; 

Average Age, 128 years, 3G 

CHAPTER III. 
Adam, at his Death, appointed Seth his Spiritual Successor 
and Representative, . 45 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Adamic Family and Government Reconstructed, . . 54 

CHAPTER V. 

The House of Adam continued 800 years after the Death of 
Adam, its Founder ; so of the other Patriarchal Houses 
to Abraham ; the whole equal to 10,500 years, . . 70 



4 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Dynastic Scheme of ScriiDture Chronology in harmony 

with Reason, 93 

CHAPTER VII. 
The Dynastic Theory of Interpreting the Tables in the Fifth 
and Eleventh Chapters of Genesis, or a Long Chron- 
ology, in harmony with the General Teachings of the 
Bible, 100 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Corroborated by History, .124 

CHAPTER IX. 
By Science, Tradition, and Mythology, .... 135 

APPENDIX. 

Chinese Uranography ; Astronomy of the Babylonians ; A 
Chronological Table by different authors ; Dates at which 
various Eras begin, 151 



NOTE. 

The author of this work being resident in China, the Publishers 
have been obliged to pass it through the press without affording him an 
opportunity for its final revision. While great care has been exercised 
to secure accuracy, yet among the numerous references to Chinese 
ancient history, it is probable that the critical reader may find several 
inaccuracies, more esi)ecially in proper names. 



INTRODUCTION 



THE term of man's existence on the earth is the 
great question of the age. Astronomy and Ge- 
ology have of late wonderfully enlarged our con- 
ceptions of time and space. Under their inspiration, 
the horizon has expanded into a boundless universe, 
and the " six days of creation/' into as many vast 
periods of duration. 

Ethnology, philology, and other kindred studies, 
have, in like manner, so extended the bounds of hu- 
man history as to overthrow all our systems of chro- 
nology, and leave the public mind without land- 
marks, or reliable dates for the ages prior to the birth 
of Abraham. Divines, as well as scientific men, 
constantly feel the need of more time in which to 
account for the many evidences of liigh antiquity 
arresting their attention than the Hebrew Scriptures, 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

or even the Septuagint version of them, seem to 
furnish. 

On account of the painful state of doubt and un- 
certainty which now prevails on the subject, every 
sincere effort to discover the truth, to remove the 
embarrassment that increasing wisdom has produced, 
and bring faith, reason and facts into harmony, will 
be welcomed by all honest minds, no matter by 
whom it may be made, or from what source the de- 
sired information may be drawn. 

The diflSculty, as I shall endeav^or to show, is appa- 
rent rather than real, having grown out of a general 
misunderstanding of the tabulated names and dates 
recorded in the fifth and eleventh chapters of the 
Book of Genesis. 

My attention was first drawn to this fact, over 
three years ago, while preparing an "Epitome of 
Ancient History," in the Chinese language. This 
language, which I have now been using nearly a 
quarter of a century, presents many thoughts and 
expressions in striking resemblance to those of the 
ancient Hebrew. Infiuenced by this resemblance 
and a casual remark of an ordinary man, I discover- 
ed the key, as I confidently believe, with which to 



INTRODUCTION'. i 

unlock the casket, and bring to light the true ages 
of the patriarchs, and the system of chronology con- 
tained in those important chapters. I shall, there- 
fore, attempt, in the present work, to establish the 
two following propositions : 

I. 

That the antediluvian patriarchs did not live as 
individual men to the marvelous length of over eight 
and nine hundred years, but on an average only one 
hundred and twenty, and the postdiluvians one hun- 
dred and twenty-eight. 

II. 

That the two tables of Genesis present, in regular 
succession, nineteen patriarchal houses, dynasties, or 
governments, covering a term of, at least, ten thou- 
sand five hundred years duration. Or thus : 

From Adam to the flood, , . . . . 7,737 years. 
*' the flood to the birth of Abraham, . . 2,763 "^ 

10,500 

** the birth of Abraham to Christ, . . . 2,000 



12,500 
" Christ to the present time, . . . . 1,876 



Making a sum total of ..'... 14,376 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

for tlie existence of man on the earth, beginning with 
Adam, the father of Seth, instead of only six or 
seven thousand, as generally supposed. 

I am fully aware of the boldness of these propo- 
sitions, and also of the mighty consequences involv- 
ed in their establishment. I know they imply a 
"change of base," among the various learned com- 
batants now in the field, the modification of many 
opinions, the fall of many theories, the revision of 
many books, and liberty for all to believe both in the 
Bible and in modern discoveries. The field is a very 
wide one, and I shall not attempt to give all the 
steps by which my present convictions have been 
reached, but only a general outline of the proofs and 
arguments on which they rest, and leave the result 
to the judgment of others, in the hope that all false 
notions as to the length of human life in primitive 
times may be corrected, and a true system of chro- 
nology spring from my humble efforts. 

Tung Chow, Feb,, 1876. 



THE 

PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 



FROM 



ADAM TO ABEAHAM. 



PROPOSITION FIRST. 

The antediluvian patriarchs did not live, as indi- 
vidual men, to the marvelous age of over eight and 
nine hundred years; but, on an average, only one 
hundred and twenty ; and the postdiluvians, one hun- 
dred and tvt^enty eight. 



PROPOSITION SECOND. 

The two tables of Genesis present a regular suc- 
cession of nineteen houses, dynasties, or govern- 
ments, covering a term of at least ten thousand five 
hundred years. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE LENGTH OF LITE ACCORDIJSTG TO THE ANTEDILUVIA]Sr 

TABLE. ^ 

THE human mind naturally arranges all objects 
and events according to their relations to each 
other in time and space. The multiplication of the 
former requires a corresponding extension of the lat- 
ter. During the last half century our knowledge of 
the facts pertaining to the past has greatly increased; 
hence the strong desire for a more extended system 
of chronology than any of those heretofore received. 
Scholars of various schools have searched most ear- 
nestly in every direction for reliable data on which 
to construct it except the one where it is found — the 
tabulated names and dates in the fifth and eleventh 
chapters of Genesis. These, beginning with the 
head of the race, continue the succession of patri- 
archal governments, along the chosen line of Seth, 
through the primitive ages of the world down to the 
birth of Abraham, about 2000 B. C. Then the de- 
tailed history of himself and posterity opens, and 



12 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

dates become more satisfactory. The first or ante- 
diluvian table reads, according to our English trans- 
lation and punctuation, as follows: 

1. "And Adam lived 130 years, and begat a sonxxi 
his own likeness, after his image ; and called his 
name Seth: And the days of Adam after he be- 
gat Seth w^ere 800 years : and he begat sons and 
daughters: And all the days that Adam lived 
were 930 years ; and he died. 

2. And Seth lived 105 years, and begat Enos: And 
Seth lived after he begat Enos 807 years, and be- 
gat sons and daughters: And all the days of Seth 
were 912 years; and he died. 

3. And Enos lived 90 years, and begat Cainan : 
And Enos lived after he begat Cainan 815 years, 
and begat sons and daughters: And all the days 
of Enos were 905 years: and he died. 

4. And Cainan lived 70 years, and begat Mahalaleel: 
And Cainan lived after he begat Mahalaleel 840 
years,^ and begat sons and daughters : And all the 
days of Cainan were 910 years: and he died. 

6. And Mahalaleel lived 65 years, and begat Jared: 
And Mahalaleel lived after he begat Jared 830 
years, and begat sons and daughters: And all the 
days of Mahalaleel were 895 years: and he died. 

6. And Jared lived 162 years, and he begat Enoch: 
And Jared lived after he begat Enoch 800 years, 



i 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 13 

and begat sons and daughters: And all the dajs 
of Jared were 962 years: and he died, 

7. And Enoch lived 65 years, and begat Methuselah: 
And Enoch walked with God after he begat Me- 
thuselah 300 years, and begat sons and daughters: 
And all the days of Enoch were 365 years: And 
Enoch w^alked with God: and he was not; for God 
took him. 

8. And Methuselah lived 187 years, and begat La- 
mech : And Methuselah lived after he begat La- 
mech 782 years, and begat sons and daughters : 
And all the days of Methuselah were 969 years : 
and he died. 

9. And Lamech lived 182 years, and begat a son: 
And he called his name Noah, saying this same 
shall comfort us concerning our w^ork and toil of our 
hands, because of the ground whicli the Lord hath 
cursed. And Lamech lived after he begat Noah 
595 years, and begat sons and daughters: And all 
the days of Lamech were 777 years: and he died. 

10. And Noah was 500 years old: and Noah begat 
Shem, Ham, and Japheth." 

The above table, as is well known, has come down 
to us through the medium of the Hebrew language. 
The author is unknown, but it bears on its very face 
all the marks of historic verity, and has always com- 
manded the highest respect. It is, even in its pre- 



14 PATRIARCHAL DTJSTASTIES 

sent form, confessedly a most ancient document. 
The materials from which it was composed must have- 
been taken from antediluvian records — most proba- 
bly by some one living in the five hundredth year of 
Noah, the point of time where it closes. That it was 
brought by Abraham into Canaan, subsequently 
passed through the hands of Moses and Aaron, re- 
ceived their sanction and translation into the then 
living Hebrew, is, to my mind, the most probable of 
all suppositions. The ages of which it treats being^ 
so remote, the words so few, archaic, and compre- 
hensive, it becomes necessary for us of these modern 
days to study its import wdth the minutest attention, 
and by the light of all the learning, sacred and sci- 
entific, now in our possession. We enter upon the 
investigation with the firm conviction that its state- 
ments harmonize with established facts, and the in- 
variable laws of nature. 

In the first place, I would call the attention of the 
reader to the fact that the several sentences compos- 
ing each of the paragraphs above quoted are, in the 
original text, all of the same kind, all equally com- 
plete and independent, all beginning with the con- 
junction '' and," all wanting the nominative pronoun 
"he," and all but the last requiring the same pause, 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 15 

and the same punctuation mark, — in English, the 
colon or semi-colon. As the English language re- 
quires the nominative to be expressed before the 
leading verb in every such independent sentence, its 
omission here, in any case, will produce confusion as> 
to the time and connection of the events recorded. 
Unfortunately, the translators of our Bible have, ap- 
parently without reason or discrimination, inserted 
the "he," in some places and left it out in others. 
The punctuation is also in the same unsatisfactory 
condition. 

Thus they have, by uniting certain sentences toa 
closely to the preceding ones, unintentionally encour- 
aged false notions, both as to the chronology of the 
world, and the length of human life in its primitive 
ages. In this way the inspired document is made 
to speak contrary to the intention of its author, and 
becomes responsible for the most remarkable state- 
ments. For instance, a patriarch is not only made ta 
live nearly a thousand years, but in one case he be- 
gat a son instead of dying, and in the next, he begat 
"sons and daughters," after he is dead. This latter 
absurdity shows plainly that the sentences are all 
complete and independent of each other. So far as- 
this particular point is concerned, the first paragraph 



16 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

in the table should be rendered and punctuated in 
the following manner : "And Adam lived 139 years; 
And he begat a son in his own likeness, after his im- 
age; And he called his name Seth; And the days 
•of Adam after begetting Seth were 800 years; And 
he begat sons and daughters; And all the days that 
Adam lived were 930 years; And he died." 

Now, let us carefully study every thing in this 
leading paragraph, taking it up sentence by sentence. 
As it is the model one, its import will be substantial- 
ly that of all the rest; and therefore it will not be 
necessary to attend particularly to them. 

The key to the whole question under discussion 
may be found in the first sentence of each paragraph ; 
as, ''Adam lived 130 years," '' Seth lived 105 years," 
etc. It is this. These figures mark the length of 
their individual lives, and not the time when their 
sons were born, as generally understood. To make 
this assertion good is the task now before us. 

On the groundless assumption that they are birth 
dates has been based all the short and unsatisfac- 
tory theories as to the age of the human race, to- 
.gether with the absurd popular belief in the super- 
natural longevity of the ancient patriarchs. Divines, 
infidels, and scholars of every grade, alike taking this 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 



IT 



for granted, have, one after another, fallen into the 
same ditch, and also into endless controversies inju- 
rious to the common cause of trath. Some receiving 
the Bible with this understanding, reject the teach- 
ings of history and science as to those points; while 
others, receiving these, reject the Bible, as if it were 
responsible for interpretations, or for the difficulties- 
growing out of them. I here take occasion to enter 
an earnest protest against the course of both these 
parties, and to urge every one to examine the subject 
for himself with a mind free from all such prejudices. 
The testimony of no one of these three witnesses can 
be rejected by us with impunity. 

That my present understanding of the phrase "Ad- 
am lived 130 years" is correct — meaning he died at 
that time — may be shown by the following facts and 
arguments : 

I. The Hebrew Scriptures never employ this kind 
of phraseology, or the verb ''livecV^ with definite 
numbers, to indicate the age of a man at the birth of 
a son ; but they invariably say, such an one was a 
son 0/ blank years, when his son was born unto him, 
or some other event took place. The Hebrew, like 
all other languages, has its set forms of expression 
for turning a point of time, as may be clearly seen 



1 8 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

from the specimen passages which I shall present 
j3elow. For instance*: 

Oen. xxi. 5. ''Abraham was a son of an hundred 
years when his son Isaac was born unto him." 
Or, as our received version renders it, "Abraham 
was an hundred years old when his son Isaac was 
born unto him." 

Gen. xvi. 16. ''Abraham was a son of four score 
and six years when Hagar bare Ishmael unto him." 

Gen. xvii. 24. " And Abraham was a son of ninety 
and nine years when he was circumcised." 

Gen. xxi. 4. " And he circumcised his son Isaac, be- 
ing a son of eight days." 

Gen. xvii. 25. " And Ishmael his son was a son of 
thirteen years when he was circumcised." 

Gen. xii. 14. " And Abram was a son of seventy- 
five years when he departed out of Haran." 

Gen. XXV. 20. "And Isaac was a son of forty j^ears 

when he took Eebekah to wife." 
Gen. xxvi. 34. " And Esau was a son of forty years 

w^hen he took Judith to wife." 

Gen. xxxvii. 2. " And Joseph, being a son of seven- 
teen years, was feeding the flock with his brethren." 

Gen. V. 32. "And Noah was a son of five hundred 
years," (when God commanded him to prepare an 
ark for the saving of his house. See Gen. vi. 9- 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 19 

19. Also, Heb. xi. 7; 1 Peter iii. 20.) ^' And 
Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth." The ge- 
neric and specific manner of using proper names 
will be discussed in another place. 

Gen. vii. 6. ''And ISToah was a son of six hundred 
years when the flood of w^aters was upon the 
earth." 

O-en. xi. 10. "And Shem was a son of an hundred 
years (w^hen the flood began.) And he begat Ar- 
pliaxad two years after the flood." 

Lev. ix. 3. " Lambs and calves are sons of a year 
when they are taken for sacrifice." 

Josh. xiv. 7. Caleb said, "A son of forty years was I, 
w^hen Moses the servant of the Lord sent me to 
Cadesh-barnea to espy out the land." 

1 Kings xiv. 21. "Rehoboamwas a son of forty-one 
years when he began to reign." 

1 Kings XX. 42. " Jehoshaphat was a son of thirty- 
five years when he began to reign," &c., &c. 

Any one can readily see how awkward it would 
sound to say, Isaac lived forty years, and took Re- 
becca to wife ; or, Jehosaphat lived thirty-five years, 
and began to reign ; he lived thirty years and wrote 
a book, and the like. Many other passages can be 
brought forward to show that such is the phraseology 



20 PATRIARCHAL DY:N^ASTIES 

constantly employed in the Old Testament to express 
the age of a man at the birth of a son, or the occur- 
rence of some other event. The equivalents of our 
neuter verb was^ and the adjective old occur in the 
first member of the sentence, with the adverb when 
in the second, in such cases. 

To this rule I have not been able to find a single 
exception ; and, therefore, to make the received in- 
terpretation of the text under consideration correct^ 
it should read: ''Adam was an hundred and thirty 
years old when his son was born unto him." Or, 
" Seth was an hundred and five years old when Enos 
was born." 

Perhaps it might be said, he was 130 years old 
when he begat a son ; but it cannot be* said he lived 
130 years and begat a son, either in Hebrew or in 
any other language, living or dead, as far as I am 
able to judge. The Greek, Latin, German, French, 
English, and Chinese, all say a man was so many 
years old, or of such an age, when a son was born, 
or something else took place — no matter how the 
construction of the words may be varied, the verb 
"liveth" is never employed in this manner. Does 
it then, in the catalogues of Genesis alone, form an 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 21 

exception to a uiiiversal law of human speech. It 
cannot be so, it seems to me. 

But this is not all. It is the very word by which 
the Hebrew Bible indicates the termination of a 
man's life, or of existence of some kind, as the follow- 
ing passages will make abundantly plain : 

Gen. 1. 22. "And Joseph lived an hundred and ten 
years" — a phrase exactly similar to the one, " And 
Adam lived an hundred and thirty years ;" or, 
" Seth lived an hundred and five years," &c. Now, 
we know that Joseph died at that time ; for it is so 
stated in the twenty-sixth verse below. 

Gen. xxiii. 1. '^ And the years of the life of Sarah 

were an hundred and twenty and seven years; 

these were the years of the life of Sarah." 
Gen. XXV. 7. "These are the days of the years of 

Abraham's life which he lived, an hundred three 

score and fifteen years." 

Gen. xlvii. 28. *'And Jacob lived in the land of 
Egypt seventeen years;" at which time we learn 
he died. 

Gen. V. 5. "And all the days that Adam lived were 
nine hundred and thirty years." It matters not 
whether the name Adam has here a generic or a 
specific sense, the verb " lived," in either case, re- 
fers to the end of existence. 

Gen. xi. 11. ''And Shem lived after he begat Ar- 

2 



22 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

phaxad five hundred years." Nothing is said of 
his death, or of any other of the postdihivian 
patriarchs mentioned in the second table. If they 
did not die at the end of the time to which they 
are said to have lived, they would still be alive, 
and "begetting sons and daughters." 

Gen. ix. 28. "And Noah lived after the flood three 
hundred and fifty years." 

2 Kings xiv. 17. "And Amaziah lived after the 
death of Jehoash fifteen years." 

Job xlii. 16. "After this, Job lived an hundred and 
forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons' sons, 
even four generations." 

Now, if Job " saw " his sons and sons' sons of 
four generations, that were born at various times 
within the 140 years, and Adam's " sons and daugh- 
ters" were "begotten" within the 800 years, as is 
universally understood, then Seth was also born at 
some unspecified point within the 130 years, and not 
at their close. The three sentences are of the very 
same kind, and the births cannot be placed first with- 
in and then without the given number, according to 
the reader's arbitrary pleasure ; but they must all be 
construed alike. 

Since, then, the "130 years'* do not specify the 
time of Seth's birth, they must of necessity specify 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 



23 



the time of Adam's death ; for there is nothing else 
to which thej can possibly refer. 

If such be the nature of the language employed in 
the Tables, then the individual man called by the 
name of 







Heb. 


Text. 




Sam. 


Text. 


Aciam liyed as a man, 


130 


years. 


As a chief, 130 "years. 


Seth 


(( 


105 


a 




105 




Enos '^ 


a 


90 


ii 




90 




Cainan '* 


it 


70 


a 




70 




Mahalaleel * ' 


ii 


65 


ii 




65 




Jared '* 


a 


162 


it 




62 




Enoch ' * 


SI 


65 


ii 




65 




Methuselah " 


ii 


187 


a 




67 




Lamech ** 


(I 


182 


a 




53 




Noah (Estimated) 


a 


143 


a 




(143) 





Or, on an average, the term of 120 years, instead of 
over 800. 

I might now consider the sense of the first sen- 
tence in the paragraph under discussion as establish- 
ed, and proceed to the next one ; but, lest some of 
my readers, through the influence of long custom, 
may be hard to satisfy, I will add still further proofs 
and arguments in support of the above interpre- 
tation. 

II. That the life of the antediluvian patriarchs 
was on an average only 120 years is substantially as- 
serted in the third verse of the sixth chapter of Gen- 
esis itself. It reads thus : "And the Lord said, My 



24 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

Spirit shall not always strive (dwell) with man, for 
that he also is flesh; yet his days sTiall he an hund- 
red and twenty years." 

In the first place, notice the connection in which 
these words stand. Second, that the verb "shall be/' 
in onr Bible, is not the future, but the past tense, in 
the original text. Third, that the last clause in the 
verse is not necessarily the words of the Lord, but 
rather those of the author himself, the statement of 
an historical fact. 

The author, no matter who he was, writes like all 
other historians, and records only past events. He 
can make no assertion as to the future, except by 
quoting a prophecy already in existence. Having 
begun with the third verse of the fifth chapter to 
give a list of the successive houses from Adam in the 
line of Seth, he continues straight on, without break- 
ing the thread or turning aside to mention other mat- 
ters, till he brings it down to his own time in the 
five hundredth year of Noah's reign, or life, or what- 
ever you may call it. The table being thus complet- 
ed, the author then goes back to the beginning in the 
chapter below (verse 1 to 9,) and gives a very brief 
but graphic account of the times over which he had 
before rapidly passed, till he comes again to Noah, 



FKOM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 25 

in the eighth verse, where he brings his history to a 
close. Commencing with the ninth verse, the suc- 
ceeding portions of Genesis seem to have been taken 
from postdiluvian documents. 

As the first eight verses throw a flood of light on 
the antediluvian period of the world, it will be neces- 
sary for us to dwell sufiiciently long to show their 
bearing upon the question in hand. 

The first and second verses read: ^' And it came 
to pass when men hegan to multiply on the face of 
the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that 
the sons of Grod saw the daughters of men that they 
were fair; and they took them wives of all which 
they chose." The epithet "sons of God," as I take 
it, designates the Sethites who, from the days of 
Enos^ " called on the name of the Lord/' and shows 
that they were a religious party. The statement here 
is to the effect that some of them at a very early day 
began to intermarry, apparently contrary to their 
law, with the ungodly, or another party, differing in 
Bome important sense from their own. This, the au- 
thor means to say, was the beginning of that corrup- 
tion of morals among the Sethites which brought on 
an apostasy from the simplicity of life, piety, and 
virtue that originally prevailed. This lapse or apos- 



26 



PATRIARCHAL DYKASTIES 



tasj, according to certain Jewish and Arabian tradi- 
tions, finally culminated in the days of Jared — about 
midway between Adam and Noah, and divides the 
whole into two distinct periods. The intermarriage- 
apostasy, or whatever it may be called, formed a dis- 
tinct epoch in the history of those times. 

The third verse reads: '^And the Lord said, My 
Spirit shall not always dwell with man, for that he 
also is flesh." Now, to whom did the Lord say these 
words? Are they not the death sentence pronounc- 
ed on Adam in chapter iii. 19, ''For dust thou art, 
and unto dust shalt thou return ?" The two passages 
are substantially the same in sense. The writer, hav- 
ing made this quotation as to the origin of the mor- 
tality of man, adds the clause, " Yet his days," or the 
average limit of his life, ''has been an hundred and 
twenty years. " But I shall suspend further comment 
on this last clause till through with the next verse^ 
the first portion of which reads thus: 

"The Nephilim, or great men, (not "giants," as 
in our Bible,*) were in the earth in those days," — 
that is, the patriarchs whose names come first in the 
table lived in those early and purer days before the 
intermarrying with the daughters of men prevailed 
* Giants are not meriy but fabulous beings. 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 27 

among them. Thej were great, I suppose, for their 
piety and virtues, rather than for their prowess, since 
they stand in immediate contrast with the Giborim^ 
or '^ mighty men" of the latter period, as may be seen, 
from these words: ''And after that (time,) when the 
sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and 
they bare sons unto them, the same became the Gi- 
borim, or mighty men, who of old were the 9nen of 
renown." 

Supposing that the writer does not turn aside to 
tell about giants, barbarians, or hobgoblins of any 
kind, but confines himself strictly to the line of dis- 
course, and to those patriarchs whose names, ages, 
and governments he had recorded in the table above, 
then by the term " Nephilim," or the great men of 
the former period, he must refer to Adam, Seth, 
Enos, Cainan, and Mahalaleel; by the " Giborim," or 
mighty men of the latter period, to Jared, Enoch, 
Methusaleh, and Noah, or some such division of them. 

Again, observe that the " 120 years" in the third 
verse stand connected with these two past periods of 
time and these two classes of men, even the latter of 
whom had become the ''men of old and renown," 
prior to the five hundredth year of Noah, or one hun- 
dred j^ears before the flood. These figures, then, 



28 ' PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

either, give the general average age of the patriarchs 
themselves, or the common limit of human life in 
antediluvian days — most probably tlie former, but 
the latter view is equally available for my present 
purpose. 

Historians are accustomed to mention, among other 
things, the average life of men in the times and na- 
tions of which they treat, and that such was the in- 
tention of the writer of this text, I have not the most 
distant doubt. Every other explanation which I 
have yet seen is whollj^ untenable. The first clause 
of the verse is certainly the words of the writer, the 
middle portion down to "flesh "as certainly those of 
the Lord, but whose are the last clause ? They seem 
to me to be the words of the writer himself. If so, he 
states an historical fact, and they should be rendered in 
the past tense. The "and" of the first clause, then, 
should be taken in the sense of though answered by 
the "and" of the last in the sense of yet. Thus: 
" Though the Lord said. My spirit shall not always 
dwell with man, for that he is flesh (or mortal) ; yet 
his days have been 120 years." 

Now, vav conversive used here refers back to the 
verb "said," which is the word of the writer; and if 
it converts his past tense into a future, it must also 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 29 

convert him from a historian into a prophet, which is 
not admissible. But take the clause, if you prefer, as 
the words of the Lord, and in the future tense, the re- 
sult will be the same ; for the question still remains, 
to whom did he address them, to Adam, or to Noah? 

If to Adam, then they were quoted to show that 
such, from his time down to the five hundredth year 
of Noah, had been the average limit of man's life. 
This interpretation of the text corresponds with the 
proofs already brought forward to show the compar- 
atively short lives of the antediluvian patriarchs, just 
as well as the other. For their average age as put 
down in the table is 120 years, and agrees with the 
words of the clause, whether those of the Lord, or 
those of the writer. 

On the other hand, they could not have been spo- 
ken to Noah or any of his contemporaries ; for they 
are in no way associated with his name or his times, 
but with the times '^when men began to multiply 
upon the face of the earth." They stand prior to 
the days of the "giants," or rather the great men, 
whose sons "afterwards became the mighty men 
who of old were the men of renown." How, then, 
can they be made to jump over all these days and 
apply to Noah and the last hundred years before the 



30 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

flood ? Such confusion in the order of language is 
not to be presumed. If they had been addressed to 
l^oah, they would naturally be found recorded in 
connection with the seventh or thirteenth verse, in- 
stead of the third, as any one can see. As the record 
in the fifth chapter had been brought down to with- 
in one hundred years of the flood, how can the ex- 
pression refer to that catastrophe ? Could even those 
sinners get 120 years out of 100? Or, from what 
point are they to be calculated ? The prevailing 
opinion that Noah was 120 years building the ark is 
without support; there being no such statement 
either in the Old or the New Testament. 

Further, the language of the third verse, " My 
Spirit shall not always dwell with man, for that he 
is flesh," or mortal, is not applicable to the sudden 
destruction of the race in health and vigor by a del- 
uge, but to death by the ordinary operations of na- 
ture. That such was the writer's meaning when he 
penned these words is most evident. 

It would never have received any other explana- 
tion, if commentators had not first fallen into the er- 
ror of supposing that the ancient patriarchs were a 
kind of giants, able to live a thousand years ! Such 
ideas have happily had their day. By the way, the 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 31 

translators of our Bible have rendered several diifer- 
ent Hebrew words by the term ^' giant !" It may be 
well for western people to know that the Chinese 
in common conversation indiscriminately apply the 
epithet tajin.^ ''big men," to persons of respectabil- 
ity, age, virtue, office, or unusual size. 

Other desperate interpretations of the text are not 
worth refutation, and nothing more need be said un- 
der this head. 

III. Outside of the tables, the meaning of which 
is now in dispute, there is not in all the Bible the 
most distant allusion to any such ages as eight and 
nine hundred years. The idea was not only unknown 
to Abraham, Isaac, and Moses; but there are pas- 
sages inconsistent with the existence of such a belief 
— passages even supporting the short-life theory for 
which I am contending. 

For instance, in Gen. xv. 15, the Lord said unto 
Abraham, "Thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; 
thou shalt be buried in a good old ageP Now, 
what did the Lord mean by ''a good old age," and 
how did he fulfil this promise? Chapter xxv. 7, 8, 
will answer these questions. ''And these are the days, 
of the years of Abraham's life which he lived, an 
hundred and seventv and five vears. Then Abraham 



32 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old 
man^ and full of years ; and was gathered unto his 
people." 

Gen. XXXV. 28,29. '' And the days of Isaac were an 
hundred and eighty years ; and Isaac gave up the 
ghost and died, and was gathered unto his people, 
being old ^ndifuU of days." 

How, I ask, could that promise have been given, or 
these two men be called ''old and full of years," in 
the face of the fact that their term of life was far be- 
low that of their immediate ancestors, and not even 
a third of that which had been allotted to those more 
remote ? Verily the writer must have penned these 
words with the knowledge, or the belief, that the 
^ges of Abraham and Isaac surpassed those of their 
predecessors ; otherwise, I cannot conceive what 
-sense can be made out of such language as the above. 

Again: Gen. xvii. 17. ''Then Abraham fell upon 
his face and laughed, and said in his heart. Shall a 
child be born unto him that is an hundred years old, 
and shall Sarah that is ninety years old bear ?" 
Also, xviii. 12. "Therefore Sarah laughed within 
herself, saying. After I am waxed old shall I have 
pleasure, my lord being old also ?" This laugh of 
unbelief on their part bears its testimony in the same 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 33 

direction. What was the ground of it ? It seemed 
to them contrary to the course of nature, inconsist- 
ent with their own observation and knowledge of 
human history. Had they understood these records 
of Genesis as they have been understood in modern 
times, and known that many of their ancestors had 
sons when largely over a hundred years of age, and 
lived almost to a thousand, they would not have re- 
garded tlie announcement that they should have a 
son as at all strange, or laughed at the thought of it. 
There is much food for reflection in that laugh of 
old Abraham and Sarah. 

Let us now take the testimony of Moses on the 
subject. He says in his prayer placed under the 90th 
Psalm : " Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place 
in all generations. Before the mountains were 
brought forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth 
and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting 
Thou art God. Thou turnest man to destruction; 
and sayest, Return (to dust) ye children of men. . . 
All our days are passed away in Thy wrath. We spend 
our years as a tale that is told. The days of our 
years are three score years and ten ; and if by reason 
of strength they be four score, yet is their strength 



34 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly 
away. 

Thus he asserts in the plainest terms that seventy 
and eighty years had been the ordinary limit of hu- 
man life in all the previous ages of the world. And 
such it has been from his day to the present. Of 
all men, Moses is certainly a competent witness, be- 
ing not only familiar with the history and language 
of his own people from the beginning, but also with 
all the ancient lore of Egypt. He was himself most 
probably over eighty years of age when he composed 
this Psalm. Though knowing that some of his an- 
cestors had lived beyond a hundred years, he might 
still use such language with propriety; but not if 
their ages had, without exception, ranged from 133 
all the way up to 969. 

Lastly, Let us hear the words of Job (xiv. 1, 2, 5.) 
^' Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and 
full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower and 
is cut down. He fleeth also as a shadow, and con- 
tinueth not. His days are determined, the number 
of his months are vdth Thee. Thou hast appointed 
his bounds that he cannot pass." 

The author of Job must have been conversant with 
the Book of Genesis, for he says, " If I covered my 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 35 

transgression as Adam," in allusion to one of its 
statements. 

Having shown what was the actual age of each 
patriarch from Adam to Noah, and the mean term 
of the whole to be 120 years, we shall continue the 
subject in the next chapter, and make it appear that 
it was of similar leno^th from Noah to Abraham. 



CHAPTER 11. 

THE LENGTH OF LIFE ACCORDIlsra TO THE POSTDILUVIAN 

TABLE.* 



4 



THE ancient Hebrews seem to have possessed two 
distinct copies of Genesis, differing more or less 
from each other, like the Books of Kings and Chron- 
icles, or the Fonr Gospels, but both held as sacred 
and authoritative. They are now known to us as the 
" Hebrew and Samaritan texts." Their apparent disa- 
greement on points of chronology has sorely puzzled 
many eminent scholars, and various unsatisfactory 
explanations have been proposed. The view now 
advocated not only tends to harmonize the Bible 
chronology with reason and well known facts, but 
also the Hebrew and Samaritan texts with each 
other. This is done by supposing that the Hebrew 
text in the antediluvian table gives the years which 
the patriarchs lived as men^ the Samaritan text the 
years they lived as chiefs. The order in the postr 
diluvian table is reversed, the Hebrew giving the 

* Gen. X. 10-37 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 



37 



years they lived as chiefs, the Samaritan the years 
they lived as men. It is highly probable that the 
verb "lived" would be employed there instead o£ 
" reigned," because it better expressed the natm^e of 
the patriarchal government. It is also, perhaps, the 
more ancient term. 

As we are still only concerned with the length of 
their lives as men^ we shall follow the Samaritan 
text in the postdiluvian catalogue, for the same rea- 
son that we followed the Hebrew in the antediluvian 
one. The age of Shem not being recorded, we only 
know he lived over 102 years, and we can do no 
better than give him an average number. 

The account in the two texts stands thus : 









Sam 


Text. 




Heb. Text. 


Shem lived < 


18 a man, 


137 


(?) 


years. As a chief, 




-(?)yrs. 


Arphaxad 






135 








35 




Salah 






130 








30 




Heber 






134 








34 




Peleg 






130 








30 




Reu 






132 








32 




Serug 






130 








30 




Nahor 






79 








29 




Terah 






145 




ti ti Jq 


Ur, 


70 





Making a mean of 128 

That this is the true solution of the discrepancy 
3 



38 



PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 



between the two texts may be seen, first, from the 
fact that the lives here in the Samaritan text most 
strikingly correspond in length with those of the 
Hebrew text in the antediluvian catalogue ; second, 
from the fact that their lives, when thus reviewed, 
both before and after the flood, tally with those 
found between Abraham and Joshua, which are as 
follows : 

175 years. 



Abraham lived as a man, 


Sarah 




Ishmael 




Isaac 




Jacob 




Joseph 




Levi 




Kohath 




Amram 




Moses 




Aaron 




Joshua 





127 




127 




180 




147 




110 




137 




133 




137 




120 




123 




110 





An average of 135 years for each of these. How 
striking the similarity all along the line ! 

From Adam to Noah, man's mean "age is 120 years. 
** Noah to Abraham, '' " 128 '' 

" Abraham to Joshua, '' " 135 " 

Third, the Hebrew figures in the postdiluvian list 
are entirely too short for individual lives, and out 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 39 

of all proportion to those both before the flood and 
after the days of Abraham; but, on the other hand, 
they are in striking accord with the ordinary reigns 
of kings or chiefs — 31 years. Fourth, the whole 
numbers attached to the names in both texts and in 
both tables are entirely too great for the lives of 
men, but agree most thoroughly with the duration 
of dynasties or governments, as I shall elsewhere 
make manifest. 

Such, then, is the real teaching of our Scriptures 
as to the length of human life in the early ages of 
the world. Their statements, when thus understood, 
are at once freed from the charge of being mythical, 
and placed on a firm foundation, being sustained by 
the voice of history, both ancient and modern, as we 
will find by attending to what it says on the subject. 

For instance: Manetho begins his thirty-one dy- 
nasties of Egypt with the reign of Menes, "the first 
of the mortal kings." The first dynasty, lying back 
in remote antiquity, had its seat in the city of This, 
and to it he assigns a period of 253 years duration, 
under eight successive sovereigns. 

Now, if we allow the usual rate of one-third of 
their whole lives for reign^ the account for the first 
five dynasties will stand thus: 



40 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 



I. Dynasty, 


Length. 
253 yrs. 


Kings. 
8 


Av. reign. 
31| yrs. 


Whole life of each king, 
95 yrs. 


II. 


302 " 


8 


38 '' 


113 '* 


III. 


214 '' 


9 


24 '* 


71 *' 


IV. 


•284 '' 


8 


35^ '* 


106 '' 


V, 


248 '' 


9 


27 J '' 


82 '' 



Lenormant and Chevalier, in their excellent " Man- 
ual of Ancient History," regarding all of the " Thirty- 
one Dynasties of Manetho" as successive, put Menes 
(the head of the first) at 5004 B. 0. Baron Bunsen, 
regarding them as mostly successive, puts him at 
3643 B. 0. Mr. Poole, regarding many of them as 
contemporary, reduces the time to 2717 B. C. Fol- 
lowing Bunsen's date as the best — for recent re- 
searches tend to confirm it — then these five dynas- 
ties will cover that which is generally considered to 
be the antediluvian period of the world, and furnish 
ages, under the most liberal calculation, not sur- 
passing 120 years. Even Mr. Poole's date sends 
Menes full 425 years beyond Usher's flood, and 
makes the five dynasties cover the times of Noah, 
Shem, Arphaxad, Salah, and Heber. Ages range 
from 71 to 113. Still further, Mr. Goodwin, a cele- 
brated Egyptologist, has shown that 110 years was 
the utmost limit of ancient Egyptian life. 

Again, the second Chaldean dynasty, according 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 41 

to Berosus, lasted 234 years, under eight kings, which 
would give an average of only 88 years to each of 
them. It began, as estimated by Mr. George Raw- 
linson, 2286 B. C, and covers the interval between 
Salah and Terah, the father of Abraham. Its co- 
temporary Egyptian ones yield even a shorter term. 

Yao Wong^ the head of the first Chinese dynasty, 
which began 2205 B. C, lived, as stated in the 
books, 114 years; his successor, Shun^ 110. This 
first dynasty itself lasted 439 years, under seventeen 
different emperors,. with an average reign of 26, and 
whole life of about 77. The second dynasty lasted 
644 years — twentj^-eight emperors; average reign, 
23; whole life, 69. These two djmasties extended 
from the days of Peleg to those of Solomon. 

In the above calculations the short system, or 
Usher's Chronology, has been followed, of course, 
for the sake of argument. 

Such, then, is the testimony of these venerable 
witnesses, corroborating my interpretation of the 
tables of Genesis as to the ages of the early patri- 
archs. These most ancient and reliable histories 
know nothing of human life reaching 200 years ; 
neither do those of Assyria, Phoenecia, Greece, Rome, 
or modern times. Take the following from the New 



42 



PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 



American Cyclopaedia, article Age, for its highest 
modern range. It says: "Pliny gives some in- 
stances of longevity taken exclusively from the re- 
gion between the Apennines and the Po, as found 
in the census instituted by Vespasian; and within 
these narrow limits he enumerates fourteen persons, 
who had attained the age of 110 j^ears, twenty to- 
the age of 125, forty the age of 130, forty the age 
of 135, thirty the age of 140, and one the age of 150. 

Zeno is said to have lived 102, Democritus 104^ 
Clovia 115, and numerous other similar cases are 
found recorded of ancient Greece and Rome, as well 
as of modern times and nations. Dr. Yan Oven 
gives seventeen examples exceeding 150; and Mr. 
Bailey, in his Records of Longevity, a catalogue of 
over three thousand cases verging on to 100 or more, 
and not a few reaching as high as 150. Many of 
these may be more or less satisfactorily authenticated ; 
and there can be no doubt of the comparatively 
frequent prolongation of human life to the age of 
100, 110, 120, 130, 140; some even to 150, 160, 
170; and in one known case to 185 — a Hungarian 
peasant named Petrarch Czartan, who was born in 
A. D. 1587 and died in 1772. 

Putting all these facts and arguments together. 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 4:3 

we come to the conclusion that the Bible joins pro- 
fane history in declaring that the ordinary limit of 
human life has always been from 70 to 80 years, 
the ordinary extreme limit from 130 to 150, and the 
extraordinary limit from 160 to 187. Of this last 
class only five individuals are mentioned in the He- 
brew Scriptures — Jared^ Methuselah and Lamech, 
before the flood ; Abraham and Isaac after it. Even 
these have been equalled in modern times, according 
to the authority above quoted. 

The Hebrews are a strong, well-built, sober, and 
peace-loving race. From the beginning they re- 
sided in a most genial and healthy climate, under a 
high moral and religious culture. These things, 
taken together, are sufficient to account for the fact 
that so great a number of their illustrious chiefs at- 
tained an age somewhat beyond the average limit. 

The vital force, as well known, is greater in some 
cases than in others, and it is possible for us to 
believe that a few favored individuals may have lived 
the whole of 200 years; but when asked to believe 
that the patriarchs, or any other men, ever rose to 
the astounding age of 900 and more, we beg to de- 
cline till better proofs are presented than an unnat- 



44: PATRIARCHAL DYJSTASTIES 

ural interpretation of a few terse passages in the 
tables of Genesis. 

If the reasons ah^eady brought forward be suffi- 
ciently strong to establish the fact that the patri- 
archs died as men at the end of the first dates at- 
tached to their names instead of begetting sons, then 
the remaining portions of the paragraph under re- 
view must also be understood in some way differing 
from the ordinary one; for Adam could not die, 
first at 130 years of age, and then again at 930, and 
be the same person ; neither could any of the others 
mentioned in the lists. 

Having ascertained the real import of the first 
sentence in one paragraph — that is, "Adam lived 
130 years," — we shall in the next chapter take up 
the second and third ones in order. 



CHAPTER III. 

ADAM, AT HIS DEATH, APPOINTED SETH HIS SPIRITUAL 
SUCCESSOR AND REPRESENTATIVE. 

I. " A ND he begat a son in his own likeness, after 
-^ his image: And he called his name Seth." 
Notice, in the first place, that I have supplied the 
nominative lie. This is correctly done ; for the sen- 
tence is wholly independent, as to time, of its pre- 
ceding one — "And Adam lived an hundred and 
thirty years " That such is the case is manifest 
from the fact that the verbs ''lived," of the former, 
and "begat," of the latter, are non-correlative, or, 
in other words, they do not answer to each other. 

Correlative verbs form dependent or connective 
sentences, as to time; non-correlative verbs, inde- 
pendent or disconnective ones. This is a law of all 
languages ; and it may be illustrated by thousands 
of examples. Thus : Mr. Watson wrote a note and 
invited his friends to breakfast. He threw a stone 
and killed a bird. He lay down and slept. He 
lived, sixty years and died. He died and was buried, 



46 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

&c. These are correlative, and do not, according 10- 
our English idiom, require the repetition of the 
nominative. 

Again : Mr. Watson graduated at Yale ; and he 
took his seat in Congress when comparatively young.. 
He lived to a good old age ; and he begat seven 
sons. ''Job lived, after this, 140 years; and he saw 
his sons, and his sons' sons, even four generations."*^ 
"And Adam lived 130 years, and he begat a son," 
&c. The verbs in all these being non-correlative, 
the sentences are disconnective as to time, and re- 
quire the nominative to be repeated. 

The verb lived so readily suggests its counterpart 
died that all speakers and writers are in the constant 
habit of leaving it to be supplied by the mind. 
Such, I maintain, is the case throughout the cata- 
logues of Genesis. Notice, in the second place, that 
the words ''a son" and ''own" are not in the original 
text, but have been supplied by the translators- 
That the verb "begat" should occur here without 
its object being expressed is very remarkable, and 
very difficult to see the reason why. It is expressed 
in an exactly similar passage in the same chapter, 
(verse 28); "And Lamech lived 182 years: and he 
* Dr. Conant's translation and punctuation. 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 



4T 



begat a son (ben)\ And he called his name Noah.'^ 
It is omitted only in two or three other places where 
the phraseology is much involved, but here it is. 
quite simple. 

" Beget" is one of those verbs which seems naturally 
to demand an object after it. Simply to say he 
begat, without saying son, daughter, child, heir, suc- 
cessor, or something of the kind, is certainly a very 
violent ellipsis, and hard to fill with absolute cer- 
tainty. However, I will accept "a son" as the supply 
here, and pass on; but I reject '^own" both as an 
unnecessary and an injurious addition. It makes- 
the terms, "likeness and image," refer directly to 
the personal appearance and moral character of 
Adam, which, in all probability, is very far from 
what was intended by the author of the original 
text. As they occur in a table of dates and succes- 
sions, is it not much more reasonable to suppose they 
refer to the fact that this son became Adam's heir 
or successor and representative in the patriarchal 
office, than to the irrelevant ones of physical form 
and moral traits? Not only so, but of what use 
would such a statement be? The author has no 
where told us whether Adam was well or ill favoured, 
white or brown, robust or slender, or anything what- 



48 PATRIARCHAL DYJSTASTIES 

ever as to his moral peculiarities. The object with 
which another is compared must be previously known 
or described; for otherwise no sort of idea will be 
conveyed to the mind. " Likeness and image" are 
synonymous terms in English ; were they necessarily 
such in the most ancient Hebrew? Or w^ould any 
writer be likely to employ two words of exactly the 
same import, in such a very brief record as this, to 
express nothing ? They seem to be here used in a 
sense of exaltation, as when first met with — Gen. i. 
26: ''And God said, Let us make man in our image 
after our likeness, and let them have dominion over 
the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and 
over the cattle, and over all the earth." By these 
words, then, man was made the heir of God, and 
given dominion over His earthly possessions. In 
similar language Christ is ''appointed heir of all 
things." (Heb. i. 1 to 4.) 

In this sort of sense I conceive Seth was said to 
be Adam's likeness and image, or successor and re- 
presentative ; but not in personal appearance or 
moral character. Was Seth more like his father in 
these repects than his brothers? If so, then this 
chosen son was morally the worst of the family, and 
these terms are used of him in a depreciatory way I 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. • 49 

See 1 Cor. xv. 45 to 50. I cannot accept this view 
of the question. 

Notice, in the third place, that our verb "begat" 
is much less comprehensive than its original yolad^ 
v^hich, among other things, means to make, to create, 
and to constitute. Besides, yolad in this sentence, 
and everywhere else in both tables, is in the Svphil^ 
or " Causative form" of the verb, a form that makes 
or causes its object to be, do, or become something 
different from that of the root, as will be shown 
elsewhere. 

Now, we know that Seth was the substitute of 
Abel, who, by the favor of God, was constituted heir 
of the promises by faith. So Seth, by taking Abel's 
place, became the progenitor of the chosen race and 
Adam's successor as to things of a prophetic and re- 
ligious nature. The sense of the two sentences, as 
I suppose, may be expressed about thus : "And he 
begat a son, whom he made his successor and repre- 
sentative; and he called his name. The Appointed 
One." 

However, nothing of all which has been said un- 
der this head is really essential to my position, ex- 
cept that the sentence itself is independent of the 



"50 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

preceding one, and affords no clue wliatever to the 
time of Seth's birth. The next in order reads thus : 

II. "And he called his name Seth," The Ap- 
pointed One. The leading idea of the sentence, it 
seems to me, is that this younger son of Adam did 
not have the birthright hy nature^ but was made 
the heir of the religious promises hy appointment^ 
the name Seth being given him as significant of the 
fact. 

But when did, this important transaction take 
place — at Seth's birth or at Adam's death? I an- 
swer, at or near Adam's death ; for this view alone 
is in keeping with the record, and the circumstances 
of the case. His mother had given him the name 
at his birth, but she then said nothing about his be- 
ing the " likeness or image" of his father. But now 
Adam, the father, priest, and head of the house, 
gave or confirmed it to him after he had himself 
lived 130 years (a suitable time to die), an age above 
the average allotted to man, as I have heretofore 
conclusively shown. Again, this transaction stands 
as the last recorded act in Adam's history, and the 
name of Seth comes immediately after his in a long 
list of successions, that continue in an unbroken line 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 51 

down to Christ, the Head, Heh^, and Antetype of 
^11 the promises. 

How insignificant is the opinion that Adam, the 
progenitor and lord of the world, gave simply a 
name to a new-born infant, which was in personal 
appearance (for then it could have had no moral 
character) " the likeness and image of its father !" 

How much more natural and reasonable, consider- 
ing the place where it stands recorded, the dates and 
grand series of events that followed in Seth's line, 
to suppose that his father gave him the name or title, 
with all its implied rights, honors, and promises, in 
a solemn manner, while under th^ power of pro- 
phetic inspiration, near the close of his life. 

Perhaps, also, from this early incident began the 
custom of "blessing," which continued down through 
the patriarchal ages even to the days of David. Look 
at Noah, as the last mentioned act of his life, pro- 
nouncing the blessing upon liis three sons, and fore- 
telling their future destiny; at Abraham, sending 
away the sons of his concubines to the east country, 
and giving all that he had to Isaac, the chosen heir 
with himself of the promises; at blind old Isaac, 
setting Jacob the younger before Esau the elder, 
and constituting him lord over his brethren ; at Ja- 



52 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

cob, assembling his twelve sons around his dying 
couch, and announcing what should befall each of 
them in the last days. See him reject Reuben, his 
first-born, from "the excellency of dignity and the 
excellency of power," and bestow it upon his fourth 
son in these memorable words: " Judah, thou art 
he whom thy brethren shall praise; thy father's 
children shall bow down before thee; the sceptre 
shall not depart from Judah, nor a law-giver from 
between his feet, till Shiloh come.'' See him, as he 
makes an end of commanding them as to the rank 
and position of each one in the future kingdom of 
Canaan, gather up his feet in the bed, and yield up 
the ghost. Consider well this solemn scene, and 
you will get something like an adequate idea of what 
Adam did when he made his younger son his "like- 
ness and image, and called his name Seth," or the 
Appointed One — appointed apparently in contradis- 
tinction to some other son who was by birth the ac- 
tual head of the community, and with sole reference 
to the future. The "sceptre," given to Judah by 
Jacob at his death, only came into his hands in the 
person of his descendant, David, 640 years after the 
prophetic announcement. 

Lastly, I would here ask, at what time do kings, 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 53 

princ-es and priests appoint their successors in oflSce 
— at the birth of their sons, or at the end of their 
own days ? To ask the question is to answer it. 

Having thus suggested the legitimate meaning of 
the first half of the paragraph, it will be necessary, 
before proceeding to the next half, to consider for 
a while the probable conditions of the Adamic family 
and government during its long existence of 930 
years ; for, as we have said before, if the founder of 
it lived only 130 years, then we are compelled to 
adopt a new interpretation of all that follows through- 
out the tables. 



CHAPTEK lY. 

THE ADAMIC FAMILY AND aOYERJS^MEKT RECONSTRUCTED. 

1. \T7E slioulcl see in the term Adam, not only 
* * the name of the first man, but also that 
of the first family or historic government established 
among men. Under this name it began and con- 
tinued to develop its own social, political and re- 
ligious peculiarities during the long period of 930 
years — time more than suflicient for the rise and fall 
of a mighty empire. 

Let us reflect for a few moments in order to en- 
large our ideas as to the probable population at its 
close. But we must here reason, as in mathematics, 
from the known to the unknown. For instance, the 
population of the United States has, since 1780, 
regularly doubled itself every twenty-three years — 
allowing for immigration, in about every twenty-six. 
Now, adopting the liberal number 33 J as the standard 
of computation, and counting from the 130th year 
of Adam's life — supposing his family then composed 
of seventy persons, as in the case of Jacob — we shall 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 55 

have at the end of this first period one of the great- 
est nations that ever existed. Not only so, but snch 
could be the case after leaving out the descendants 
of Cain to form another and independent community 
half as large. Thus reckoned, the population of 
Eden would have been at the end of the first 130 
yearSj 70; at the end of the next 100 years, 560; 
at the end of the third, 4,480 ; at the end of the 
fourth, 35,840 ; at the end of the fifth, 286,720 ; at 
the end of the sixth, 2,293,760 ; at the end of the 
seventh, 18,350,080; at the end of the eighth, 
146,800,640 ; at the end of the ninth, 1,174,405,120. 

The actual result|doubtless fell far below the vast 
sum obtained by the above mode of calculation, but 
then every thing favors the opinion that the primitive 
ages of the world were civilized, peaceful and highly 
conducive to the increase of population. The United 
States can scarcely be regarded as superior in this 
respect to Eden, Mesopotamia, China, and other 
favored portions of the globe. At all events we 
have the right to conclude that Adam became the 
historical name of a great nation, and after him 
Seth, Enos, &c. 

II. If we would regard the "land of Eden" as 
the primitive Canaan or promised land, where the 



56 PATRIARCHAX DYNASTIES 

Divine culture was begun and maintained during the 
first epoch of the world's history; the "garden" on 
the east of it as the original sanctuary; the Cheru- 
bim as stone images with sword in hand symbolically 
guarding the way to the Tree of Life, or the Most 
Holy Place in the "midst" of the garden; the 
original altar of sacrifice, as placed in front of the 
Cherubim, whither the people assembled themselves 
every Sabbath day to worship the Lord ; and suppose 
that around these gradually arose the national 
temple and capital city of the empire, then we should 
come much nearer to the truth, I suspect, than our 
ordinary contracted notions of a pleasure garden 
bring us. 

When reading 'the record of Adam and his times 
we should not allow a single pair of individuals to 
fill the mind or fix the attention too long; but we 
should pass rapidly on, associating with his, and 
every other name in the list, a nation, dynasty, or 
government of unusually long duration. 

We should consider them as possessing at least the 
germs of the laws, customs, institutions, religious 
faith, doctrines and rites afterwards developed in the 
tabernacle, in the code of Moses, in the temple of 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. . 57 

Solomon, in the synagogue, and finally in the Chris- 
tian Church. 

We should lay aside the conception of small tribes 
of rude, ignorant savages; for there is abundant 
proof in the Bible itself to show that man from the 
beginning was placed under the most intensely ex- 
acting moral and religious discipline — the very pro- 
cess by which barbarism is prevented, mental facul- 
ties developed, population increased, and a high 
state of civilization attained. The very dates or 
figures in the tables aiford abundant evidence of 
great advancement ; for savage tribes could never 
have kept such a record. Many of them are unable 
to count beyond twenty, and they all lose their 
history after a few centuries. Bitt I do not propose 
to discuss this question, as it is not the one under 
consideration. 

III. There is a good deal of reason for believing 
that Adam was the father of twelve sons, who be- 
came twelve tribes in the land of Eden ; that it was 
apportioned to them for a special inheritance and 
dwelling-place, where they formedj a confederacy 
similar to the one which the children of Israel after- 
wards formed in the land of Canaan. | 

In proof of this, let us hear Moses. He said to 



68 PATEIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

his people in the thirty-second chapter of Deuter- 
onomy : " Remember the days of old ; consider the 
years of many generations ; ask thy father and he 
will show thee ; thy elders and they will tell thee ; 
when the Most High divided to the nations (or 
tribes) their inheritance, when he separated the sons 
of Adam, he set the bounds of the people (in Eden) 
according to the number of the children of Israel." 
• Eden, then, was the original "holy land," the 
land where the first theocratic confederacy was es- 
tablished, and where the Divine cultus was em- 
bodied and perpetviated during the primitive ages of 
the world. It is the history of this government 
alone, in its various vicissitudes and changes of 
dynasty which is recorded in the first portions of 
Genesis. After the flood it seems to have been 
transferred to the land of Shinar, having the city of 
Ur for its principal seat until the days of Abraham, 
when it was removed to Canaan, Jerusalem becom- 
ing its distinguished metropolis down to the dis- 
persion of the Jews. 

From the twelve sons of Adam and their tribal 
divisions in the original land of Eden, we may ac- 
count for the fact that the number twelve, at a very 
early day, became a sacred number among the 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 59 

Hebrews and various other western Asiatic nations. 
In the Bible alone we have the twelve tribes of 
Canaan (including the Perizzites), the twelve tribes 
of Joktan, of Nahor, of Ishmael, of Israel, and finally 
the twelve Apostles of Christ, the founders of the 
Church — the last phase of the kingdom of God on 
earth. 

Says the learned Kitto: ''The Persians, as well 
as other oriental peoples, still have geographical and 
ethnological divisions according to the number 
twelve," and he infers from many reasons, " that 
it was held in so much favor among them that, when 
possible, doubtful cases were adapted to it." 

Further, Jewish tradition has always assigned to 
Adam more sons than the three mentioned by name. 
We know that Cam was the eldest, and had the 
right by the law of nature or primogeniture to suc- 
ceed his father in the government of the community. 
But we learn that '' God had respect unto Abel ;" 
that is, chose him to be heir of the promises by faith, 
and Adam's successor as to things pertaining to the 
kingdom to come. 

This prophetic election of Abel did not of itself af- 
fect the natural rights of Cain, but he so understood 
it, and in the anger of his jealousy, rose up and slew 



60 



PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 



his brother. That he slew him in order to preserve 
his birthright to the headship of the family after the 
death of his father, is evident from these words : "And 
the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth ? And 
w^hy is thy countenance fallen ? If thou doest well 
shalt thou not have the excellency ? (and if thou 
doest not well, sin lieth at the door) and unto thee 
shall be his desire (Abel's submission), and thou 
shalt rule over liim,^' (Gen. iv. 6, 7.) 

The same kind of difficulty arose in the family of 
Isaac : "And Esau hated Jacob because of the bless- 
ing wherewith his father blessed him; and Esau said 
in his heart, the days of mourning for my father are 
at hand ; then w^ill I slay my brother Jacob. He 
took away my birthright ; and, behold, now he hath 
taken away my blessing." (Gen. xxvii.) 

Cain, for this act of murder, was banished from 
the land of Eden, and, like Esau, went beyond its 
sacred borders to the land of Nod, where he and 
his posterity established the second great historical 
kingdom of the world, with the walled city of Enoch 
for its capital. Its history is given for a few gene- 
rations in the fourth chapter of Genesis, and then 
dropped, as is the case throughout the Bible with 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 



61 



all those branches which did not belong to the chosen 
line. 

Judging from the fact that Cain and Abel were 
both engaged in their respective occupations of farm- 
ing and sheep-raising before bringing their '' offer- 
ings unto the Lord" — done apparently as their own 
voluntary acts — we infer that they were then mature 
men, perhaps as much as forty years of age. Then, 
on the death of Abel, Adam's family, according to 
the course of human events, would have been about 
complete, and his third son a full grown man. On 
the banishment of Cain from the land of Eden, this 
third son would naturally have succeeded to the 
forfeited birthright, and at his father's death become 
the head of the house of Adam. The secular gov- 
ernment of Eden would descend in the line of his 
eldest son from one generation to another ; till, from 
corruption or some other cause, the regular succes- 
sion was broken up. 

These chiefs, all reigning under one common name 
or title, constituted the first period of 930 years, 
the house or dynasty of Adam; which, in brief 
tabular language, is simply called Adam, as in 
China, where the various dynasties or reigning 
families are simply called Hia, Shang, Chen, Tsin, 



62 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

Han, &c., without any kind of qualifying epithet. 
As the mode of using proper names will be discussed 
in another chapter, let us further continue to ex~ 
amine into the probable conditions of the Adamic 
family and government. 

Allowing forty years of rule to each of Adam's 
successors, then the house bearing his name consisted 
of twenty-one chiefs, including himself. Seth would 
not be among the number, for we know that he was 
born after the death of Abel, and was, therefore, not 
the third, but most probably the youngest son of the 
family. We may suppose him, like Isaac, born out 
of due season, since his mother's remarks at his birth 
show plainly that she regarded him as the special 
"gift of God," the child of promise "instead of 
Abel whom Cain slew." He was, then, by substitu- 
tion made the progenitor of the elect branch of the 
house, and the heir of the kingdom by faith — a 
kingdom to come. Accordingly, he did not himself 
enter upon its actual possession, but like Abraham, 
Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and the other Old Testament 
worthies, waited in hope for the promised inheritance. 
Thus eight hundred long years passed away, and 
generation after generation of his sons died in faith 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 63 

without receiving even the first instalment of the 
promises. (See Heb. xi., &c.) 

The tribe of Seth during this waiting time were 
subject to the government of Adam's third son and 
his successors in office. As it was the elect and 
most virtuous member of the confederacy, it would 
multiply more rapidly in wisdom and numbers, 
while the ruling one would tend to corruption and 
decay. On the fall of the house of Adam, the 
prince of the house of Seth, or some other chosen 
member of the tribe, ascended the throne of Eden, 
and with him the tribe itself became the ruling 
people of the land. And thus the original Seth, 
like Abraham, obtained in his descendants the 
promised inheritance. 

The government of Eden remained with this latter 
Seth and the family of his eldest son for 912 years, 
constituting the second period, or dynasty of Seth. 
Enos, being the younger and chosen son of this latter 
Seth the founder of the dynasty, was the heir ex- 
pectant during its existence. On the fall of the 
house of Seth, the prince of the house of Enos took 
possession of the government, which, in its turn, 
continued with his eldest son's posterity for 905 
years, constituting the thu^d period, or dynasty o^ 



64 



PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 



Enos, Cainan being heir elect during its reign. 
The succession was thus transmitted from period to 
period, the secular government following the law of 
nature or primogeniture, the religious promises the 
law of election and faith. 

In the Scriptures, the eldest is never the " chosen 
son." From Abel to David he is, when mentioned, 
invariably a younger son of the patriarch, and waits 
in faith and hope for the promised blessing. On 
the other hand, the eldest son is always the one 
"born after the flesh," and finally cast out. Such, 
in short, is the Divine method of teaching the great 
doctrine that the "gifts and callings of God are not 
of works, but of grace, not to those born after the 
flesh, but to those born after the Spirit." 

Before leaving this section, let me remind the 
reader that the above supposed mode of transmitting 
the secular government, together with the religious 
promises, from one period or chief patriarch to 
another, claims for itself only a certain kind of 
probability and consistency with the general teach- 
ings of the Scriptures. It is only designed to show 
that, after the received interpretation of the tables 
shall have been overthrown, there remains this, or 
^om.e other allowable way of understanding them ; 



FKOM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 65 

and that we are under no necessity whatever either 
to reject their historic value, or to accept a mass of 
absurdities. 

II. Neither the Jews nor any other nation ever 
did, or ever could reckon time by the ages of fathers 
at the birth of sons. Such a thing has always been 
a moral impossibility. Genealogy is far too com- 
plicated a matter for such a purpose. In a few 
generations it would become hopelessly involved. 
Dates are attached to the reigns of kings, to the rise 
of dynasties, or to prominent events of some kind, 
not to the birth of children. Births are private 
affairs, and in no way attract the attention of a com- 
munity, or affect its social and political status. Be- 
sides, births and deaths in royal households, es- 
pecially among polygamists, are constantly occurring 
— so constantly as to render it impossible for the 
reigning sovereign to determine much before his own 
death which son should ascend the throne, even if 
he wished to do so. Supposing he did so, bow then 
could he announce the fact to all his subjects, and 
require them to keep their dates accordingly ? Such 
a mode of procedure would certainly presuppose a 
magnificent system of post ofiices, if not of tele- 
graphic wires! Would any king like to have his 



66 PATEIAKCHAL DYNASTIES 

subjects keeping their dates in the name of his son 
rather than in his own ? 

Again, if the death of the heir appointed should 
often happen, or the father often change his mind 
as to his successor, would not his people soon become 
disgusted with such an ever fluctuating standard of 
time, and adopt some more permanent one for their 
own convenience ? 

Men of our days are unable to remember the ages 
of their grandfathers at the birth of their own fathers ; 
why, then, should we regard the memories of the 
ancients as so much better than that of the moderns, 
or attribute to them such mental feats, even impos- 
sibilities ? Why consider them so unlike known 
humanity, and perpetually subject to a course of 
most stupendous and contradictory miracles ? True, 
miracles have their place in the economy of Divine 
revelation, but have we the right to manufacture 
them in order to get over difiiculties ? Mankind in 
all ages have followed the same mental laws, been 
under the same necessity of dividing time into periods, 
and preserving the relation of current events by 
comparing them with some other more prominent 
ones. 

Dates become fixed by a community or nation con- 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 67 

stantly using them in their conversation and business 
transactions, and so the most important ones are 
transferred to written history and handed down to 
future generations. 

The Chinese are the most remarkable people in 
the world for preserving ancient customs and forms 
of speech, as well as family registers. Many of these 
registers go back for hundreds, some even for 
thousands of years ; but they never note the ages of 
fathers at the birth of sons — only the birth and death 
of individuals according to the date of the Emperor's 
reign. In common conversation they fi^equently 
speak of so many ^'generations of men or generations 
of dynasties," but they never date their documents 
or their histories according to generations of any 
kind. They invariably keep time by reigns, dynasties, 
and cycles. Such, from its natm^alness, would seem 
to have been the case among all ci\dlized nations 
since the beginning of man upon the earth. The 
Jews, whose ancestors preserved the chronological 
tables in the book of Genesis, did not constitute an 
exception in any sense to tliis rule ; for they also 
reckoned by the reigns of their judges and kings in 
ordinary matters; in those of a general nature, by 
important events in their history, as the call of 



68 



PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 



Abraham, the exodus, the building of the temple, 
the captivity, &c. Every one knows that their 
chronology does not run according to the birth of 
sons. To their many genealogical registers, both in 
the Old and New Testaments, no dates or figures of 
any sort are attached. They simply say such an 
one begat such an one, or was the son of such an 
one. In all the Bible the ages of but three men at 
the birth of their sons are specified, to wit: Shem, 
Abraham, and Isaac — and this apparently, not for 
chronological purposes, but to show the power of 
God, as they w^ere unusually old at the time. 

From these various considerations, may we not 
lawfully conclude that the figures in the registers 
from Abraham to Adam are also not birth dates, but 
death dates, first of the chief patriarchs themselves, 
and then of the governments going under their 
respective names ? 

In these ancient bits of history, we have genealogy, 
chronology, and election, all combined in language 
most remarkable for brevity and comprehensiveness 
— giving in less than two short chapters the rise and 
fall of nineteen successive houses, surpassing in 
duration the most favored ones known to have ever 
existed. All are the lineal descendants of one chosen 



FKOM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 69 

progenitor, and one after the other, founded by a 

chosen head. How meagre, unsatisfactory, and full 

of diflSculties is the common understanding that 

makes them a mere succession of individual men, 

unconnected with any kind of government, national 

life, or public incident whatever ! History with 

history left out ! Men noted only for three things : 

1st, For living a marvelously long life; 2nd, For 

begetting a certain son when disproportionately 

young ; 3rd, For then waiting over seven hundred 

years and begetting other "sons and daughters" in the 

year of their death ! We shall in another place 

expose these inconsistencies; for it is a sad fact that 

men will, without examination, adopt the most 

absurd opinions, or reject the most certain truths. 

We must now return and take up the remaining 

portion of the paragraph with which we set out. 

But before doing so, allow me to suggest that the 

facts and arguments already offered are entitled to 

their full weight in determining its meaning ; for it 

is not allowable to suppose that the two parts are 

inconsistent with each other. The same person 

could not die at 130 years of age, then live 800 

more and beget sons and daughters, or die again 

at 930. 

5 



CHAPTER Y, 



THE LATTER HALF OF THE PARAGRAPH. THE HOUSE 

OF ADAM CONTINUED EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS 

AFTER Adam's death. 



THE first two sentences in the latter half of the 
paragraph, which is now to come up for discus- 
sion, reads thus in our English translation: "And 
the days of Adam after he begat Seth were eight 
hundred years ; and he begat sons and daughters." 

Notice that in this place only the nominative "he" 
has been inserted before this oft-repeated statement. 
It is correctly supplied here, and should have ap- 
peared in all the others. The ambiguity which has 
produced most of the difficulty, and led scholars 
astray in their chronological reckonings, lies in the 
first member of this verse. It has caused them, on 
the one hand, to make the life of individual men far 
too long ; and on the other, the life of the race far 
too short. The ambiguity is found in the Hebrew 
manner of using the proper names Adam, Seth, Enos, 
&c., and also in the verb yolad, here rendered in- 






PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES. 71 

variably by the verb "begat." To make this ap- 
pear will be the burden of the first two sections of 
this chapter, taking up first the names, then the 
verb. 

I. Proper names, with us, are now divided into 
several classes, among which are Personal, Family, 
ITational, and Ethnographical; but the book of 
Genesis knows nothing of such divisions. It was 
written before the origin of these distinctions, and 
in it one name only fills the ofiice of these four. 
This fact must be kept constantly in mind, otherwise 
we may make the most serious mistakes, by putting 
our own modern ideas on to the ancient text. 

All are familiar with the fact that the Old Testa- 
ment calls families, tribes and nations after the 
names of their founders; that each of those men- 
tioned in the tenth chapter of Genesis is the name 
both of a man and of a nation. This is apparent, not 
only from the fact that many of them have a plural 
termination, but also from the closing words of every 
paragraph, and of the chapter itself. Thus : 

"By these (sons and grand sons of Japheth named 
above) were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their 
lands ; every one after his tongue, after their families, 
in their nations." 



72 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

" These are the sons of Ham after their families, 
after their tongues, in their countries, and in their 
nations." 

"These are the sons of Shem, in their families, 
after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations." 

" These are the families of the sons of Noah, after 
their generations, in their nations: and by these 
were the nations divided in the earth after the flood." 

The tenth chapter of Genesis is the great ethno- 
logical chart of the world ; hence Josephus is very 
particular to tell us how all the postdiluvian nations 
bore the names of their progenitors, the immediate 
descendants of Noah, and also how some of them, 
through the influence of time, had lost their original 
designations. The Hebrews, we know, called the 
Medes,, Madai ; the Greeks, Javan, from sons of 
Japheth; the Ethiopians, Gush; the Egyptians, 
Mestre ; the Phoenecians, Ganaanites, from sons of 
Ham ; others, Elam, Asshur, Aram, &c., from sons 
of Shem. In fact, those personal names got a place 
in that short chapter because they had become 
national, and therefore of historical importance. 
Otherwise we should never have heard of them. 
The same peculiarity is continued through the more 
modern books of the Bible, Edom, Ammon, Moab, 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 



73 



Midi an, Israel, Judah, and scores of others, being 
indiscriminately the names of a man and also of a 
nation. 

Now, if the names mentioned immediately after 
the flood, as well as those more remote from it, all 
have this double sense and application, why should 
not the same be true of those mentioned before it ? 
In the very nature of things it must be so. The 
book, the language, and the people who preserved 
them, all exhibit, from first to last, a striking con- 
sistency, and therefore Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, 
and the other antediluvian names in the catalogue 
severally indicate either the progenitor himself, the 
family, nation or government which sprang from 
him, as the context and subject matter of the record 
may require. Had not those persons become some- 
thing more than mere individuals their names would 
not have been honored with those accompanying 
figures and dates, or remained to this late day. 

Did ever private persons leave behind them such 
a register with so many dates attached ? Never, 
and never will ; for it is a moral impossibility. 
Figures despise a plebeian name, but rush to score 
the years of royal fame. How very far from the 
truth of the case is the common conception that these 



74 



PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 



patriarchal titles correspond to our given namea 
Peter, James, John, and Charles ; yet this lies at 
the foundation of the received interpretation! If 
there were any such names in those early days they 
have not come down to us. 

Again, it is the constant habit of the Old Testa- 
ment to use its personal names first in a specific^ 
then in a generic sense, without the least reserve or 
notification of the change. This is done sometimes 
in alternate verses, sometimes in the same verse. 
Hundreds of examples in illustration of the fact may 
be readily produced; but a few specimen passages- 
must suffice. For instance, it is said in Genesis xlvii. 
27: "And Israel dwelt in the land of Goshen" — 
meaning both Jacob and his whole family. 

Genesis xlvii. 29 : "And the time drew near that 
Israel must die" — meaning only Jacob. 

Genesis xlix. 24: "From thence is the Shepherd^ 
the Stone of Israel" — meaning the nation. 

Judges vi. 6: "And Israel was greatly impover- 
ished because of the Midianites; and the children of 
Israel cried unto the Lord." Here the name Israel 
means first the nation, second the father of the 
nation. ^ 

Judges X. 9, 10: "Moreover, the children of Am- 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 75 

mon passed over Jordan, to fight against Judah and 
against Benjamin, and against the house of Ephraim; 
so that Israel was sore distressed; and the children 
of Israel cried unto the Lord." Observe how the 
word "house" is left off before Judah and Benjamin, 
and written before Ephraim ; also how it is first " Is- 
rael" then "the children of Israel." In both forms 
of expression the sense is the same. 

Exodus ii. 1: "And there went a man of the 
house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi." 
Now, had the word "house" been omitted before 
Levi, in the first case as in the second, it would have 
made no difierence in the meaning; for "Levi" and 
"the house of Levi," "Israel" and "the house of 
Israel," "the children of Israel," "the kingdom of 
Israel," "Judah," "the house of Judah," or "king- 
dom of Judah," and the hke, are used one for the 
other indiscriminately. Finally the name Adam 
itself is also used in this interchangeable manner, 
as in — 

Genesis iv. 25 : "And Adam knew his wife again, 
and she bare a son." Here it is specific, personal, 
and masculine gender. 

Chap. V. 2: "Male and female created he them, 
and called their name Adam." Here it is the ge- 



76 



PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 



neric name of mankind, and both masculine and 
feminine. 

Chap. V. 3 : "And Adam lived an hundred and 
thirty years." Here it is again specific and personal. 

Chap. V. 4 : "And the days of Adam after he be- 
gat Seth were eight hundred years " Here it is 
again generic, being equivalent to the "house" of 
Adam, as I conceive. 

Chap. V. 5 : "And all the days that Adam lived 
were nine hundred and thirty years." Here the two 
senses are united into one, becoming the name of 
both the founder and the house, or government. 
After these nine hundred and thirty years the nation 
ceased to be styled Adam. The dynasty being 
changed, it was next called Seth, then Enos, and so on 
down to Abraham, where tahulatedhi^iovj closes, and 
detailed history begins. 

The reader must be content with this mere outline 
of what might be said on the Bible mode of using 
its proper names, and allow me to pass on to the 
verb "begat." 

II. The Hebrew verb yolad is a generic or very 
comprehensive term, requiring several English ones 
to translate it through all its various changes of form 
and signification. On the other hand, ieget is spe- 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. jMa 

cific, having but one definite sense through every 
form, mood, and tense. 

Gesenius gives, among the active meanings of 
yolad — "1st. To bear, or bring forth as a mother; 
also, to take effect. 2d. To beget as a father; to 
create, to produce, to constitute, to appoint. 3d. 
To declare one's pedigree, or to give one's name to 
be enrolled in the registers, as in Numbers i. 18; to 
cause to bring forth; to make fruitful." 

Papine : " To be born, to be brought forth, to be 
created, as the mountains in Psalms xc. 2." 

Parkhurst gives '^ become" as among its mean- 
ings, citing Job. xi. 12, in illustration — "Vain man 
would be wise ; though a wild ass's colt, he would 
become a man !" 

Gesenius quotes Job xxxviii. 8, 9, 28, 29, and 
Deut. xxxii. 18, to show that it has the sense of to 
create, to produce; and Psalms ii. 7, to show that it 
is used for constitute, or appoint — "I have set my 
king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the 
decree: the Lord hath said unto me. Thou art my 
son, this day have I begotten thee (constituted thee 
as king)." 

Observe here how the "decree" of the Lord made, 
created, or constituted his son king of Zion. The 



78 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

same idea is similarly expressed by St. Paul in the 
first chapter of Hebrews. 

We thus see how much more varied are the shades 
of signification in yolad than in the English word 
begat, or any one similar verb in our language ; and 
how it may require several of them for its translation. 
In fact yolad strikingly resembles the Greek genOy 
or the Latin gigno in its uses. These, it is well 
known, express not only parentage, but also the act 
of elevating persons to rank or ofiice. Moreover^ 
the New Testament writers, for the purpose of exalt- 
ing persons, constantly employ the words beget, 
born, son, child, heir, and the like; and these writers 
were all Hebrew^s, and w^rote with Hebrew concep- 
tions in their minds. We create, make, or appoint 
earls, dukes, and bishops. '^ 

Let the reader also be careful to notice that yolad 
is repeated three times in every paragraph of both 
tables, and that they are all of the hijphil or causa- 
tive form of the verbal root — the first and third ones 
being in the indicative mood, future tense; and the 
second in the infinitive. Each form of the Hebrew 
verb has its own appropriate name ; as, kal, hiphil, 
hophul, &c., with its own peculiar shade of mean- 
ing. 






FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 



79- 



Gesenius in his grammar says that, "From the 
stem are produced, according to an unvarying 
analogy in all verbs, the various derivative forms, 
each distinguished by a specific change in the stem, 
with a corresponding definite change in its signi- 
fication,^'' He then gives several examples to show 
how the sense of the verb changes in passing from 
one of these forms to another; among which are the 
the following, under the head Hiphil : " Kal or stem, 
to go forth ; Hiphil, to lead forth. Kal, to be holy ; 
Hiphil, to 7nake holy^ or sanctify. Kal, to perish ; 
Hiphil, to destroy. Kal, to be heavy; Hiphil, to 
make heavy, Kal, to be rich; Hiphil, to hecome 
richP To these let me add a few taken at random 
from the Old Testament ; as, David came to Hebron ; 
they hrought Joseph into Egypt. To trust ; to "tnake 
one trust. To eat; to cause him to eat. To re- 
member ; to 7)iake mention of. To live ; to save or 
restore life. 

Thus it is plain that the hiphil form of the verb 
yolad — the one used throughout the tables — r)iakes 
or causes persons and things to do, or become some- 
thing other than that expressed by the kal, its root. 
Hence, it appears that each of the patriarchs made 
or caused one of the sons whom he begat to become 



80 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

an heir, a prince, successor, representative, or some- 
thing more than a mere son. This peculiarity of 
the hiphil form of the verb is well shown in Genesis 
xvii. 20 : "As for Ishmael, I have heard thee: twelve 
jpTinces shall he beget, and I will make Mm, a great 
nation." That is, he should beget twelve sons^ who 
should become twelve princes — sons are horn or 
begotten, princes are made or become such. It is 
also worthy of note that the kal form, past tense, is 
employed for giving the pedigrees in the fourth and 
tenth chapters, rendered thus in our Bible : "And Irad 
begat Mehujael: and Mehujael begat Methusael: 
and Methusael begat Lamech." In tenth chapter : 
"And Cush begat Nimrod: and Mizraim begat 
Ludim: and Canaan begat Zidon: Arphaxad begat 
Salah; and Salah begat Heber." 

How, then, is it, let me ask, that though in the 
tables of the fifth and eleventh chapters the form of 
the verb is changed from the kal past to the hiphil 
future, nothing is said by our translators indicating 
the accompanying change in its signification ? 
They have rendered both forms by "begat," as if 
they were the very same in sense. Did the original 
writer make this marked difference without design 
or perception of any distinction in their import ? It 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 81 

cannot be so; for what then would become of the 
law laid down so confidently by Gesenius in the 
words before quoted — "The various derivative form& 
of the verb are each distinguished by > specific 
change in the stem, with a corresponding definite 
change in its signification?" Why was not the 
English reader given the benefit of this "definite 
change of signification?" Doubtless because our 
word begat is wholly incapable of expressing the 
causative idea contained in the hiphil form of yolad. 
For it seems to have the double sense of both a 
lineal and official descent in all the registers of the 
chosen branch of Adam — a conception which no one 
word in our vocabulary can fully express. 

Yet this is nothing unusual or strange: for there 
are words in every language which cannot be per- 
fectly rendered into another. As our version of the 
Bible brings out only the lineal sense of the verb, I 
shall endeavor to bring out the official^ and the 
reader, by putting the two together, will get its full 
import as used in the table. Thus : " And the days 
of Adam, after the appointment of his son Seth, 
were 800 years." By being particular to observe 
that the previous verse closed with the words, " He 
called his name the Appointed One^'' we will readily 



82 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

see how our sentence, by keeping up this leading 
idea of its antecedent, counts the 800 years, not from 
the time of Seth's birth (which is not specified), but 
from the time he was called or made the Seth. . If 
this be so, then the 800 years indicate the period 
that elapsed between his elevation to the heirship of 
the promises and their realization, or the days of the 
house of Adam after the death of its founder. 

By the aid of Hebrew concordances I have traced 
the verb yolad through the whole of the Old Testa- 
ment, and carefully studied the reasons for its 
changes of form, especially from the kal to the 
hiphil; and I noted the following interesting facts: 

1st, In the genealogies of ordinary persons, of 
sons of concubines and rejected branches, the kal, 
or some other mode of expression other than the 
hiphil of begat, is invariably employed. 

2nd, The hiphil is used in all of the regular 
registers of the chosen line from Adam to David. 

3rd, It is used of the princes of the leading 
families in the honored tribes of Judah, Joseph, and 
Benjamin, but never of the others. 

4:th, Also always of the High Priests, from Aaron 
till after the "restoration." 

5th, The sudden, even abrupt, change of form 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM, 



83 



when one or the other of these classes comes in the 
lists, is frequently very marked, and indicative of 
evident design. 

6th, The hiphil seems to be the form of honor or 
elevation^ by which both the blood and dignities of 
patriarchs, prominent chiefs, kings, and high priests 
are transmitted. 

7th, Outside of the registers it frequently, though 
not always, implies something of the same kind. 

Our verb beget, being a sensuous one in its mean- 
ing, fails to express these shades of thought, and, 
consequently, 'they are entirely lost to the readers of 
the English version of the Scriptures. In our demo- 
cratic language, patriarchs, kings, and priests are 
born, eat, drink, live, and die like common mortals ; 
tut such is not the case in most Asiatic nations. 
With them almost every act of their sovereigns and 
high functionaries must be set forth in other than 
ordinary vulgar terms — in what is called "the of- 
ficial style." This peculiar custom is also known to 
be very ancient. 

Is it not then far more probable that the verb yo- 
lad should have this sort of compound and elevating 
sense in the pedigrees of those most noble and illus- 
trious patriarchs, than that they should have lived 



84 



PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 



as men to the great age of over 900 years ? Con- 
sidering all the serious difficulties which such lon- 
gevity involves, is it not putting far too much strain 
on reason and faith? But I cannot discuss this 
point further, lest my work should swell beyond the 
bounds fixed for the whole question. I have said 
sufficient to suggest a train of thought and research 
for all who may be inclined to investigate it for 
themselves. 

In conclusion, I feel fully justified in saying that 
this sentence puts us under no verbal or grammatical 
necessity to believe that Adam begat Seth when 
130 years old, and then lived 800 more; but leaves 
us at full liberty to hold that, having appointed him 
his spiritual heir at the former date, he died ; while 
the community bearing his name continued to exist 
as a government of some sort till the end of the 
latter, when it was succeeded, according to the 
record, by the house of Seth. 

II. The next sentence in order is: "And he begat 
sons and daughters." 

The " he" occurring here, as said before, though cor- 
rectly supplied, is not in the original, and there is no 
more reason for inserting it in this than in the other 
parallel cases, which are all without it. Now, if any 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 85 

one is bold enough to contend that the first two 
sentences in the paragraph are connected in time, and 
Seth was, therefore, born at the end of the 130 years, 
then he is bound to hold that those additional " sons 
and daughters" were born at the end of the 800. 
And what monstrous absurdities it involves ! Adam 
begat three sons in the first 130 years of his life, 
then after skipping 800 more, has an indefinite 
number of them in the year of his death ! ! But 
not only so; all the other patriarchs, one after the 
other, performed the same strange and wonderful 
feats ! ! ! If to get out of this difficulty he should 
say they were born, not at the end, but during that 
term, then he admits the truth of my position, that 
the time of Seth's birth is not specified, and with 
the admission his short chronology goes by the board. 
" That which proves too much proves nothing," is 
an axiom in logic. 

Some may ask who were these "sons and 
daughters V I unhesitatingly answer, the kings and 
queens who, in succession, ruled over the house of 
Adam during the 800 years that followed his death. 
There is no mention whatever here made of the 
common people. This table was doubtless taken 
from the royal registers of the nation, like all other 



86 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

documents of the kind, and because of its chrono- 
logical, religious and other uses, was very carefully 
preserved and handed down from age to age. 
Ordinary men leave no such records behind them, 
for the very good reason that, being of no public 
utility or concern, they soon disappear. 

III. The last two sentences in the paragraph are: 
"And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred 
and thirty years; and he died." 

These are but the summing up of what had been 
stated above. No additional information whatever 
is given. Any one can add the two preceding 
numbers together and obtain the 930. This, in all 
probability, was done by some later hand, for the 
sake of convenience ; but still at a very early date. 
No objection, however, can be offered to it on this 
account, for it is mathematically certain, and that 
kind of certainty is of the highest grade. 

The postdiluvian table is left in its original condi- 
tion, with the numbers unadded up, nothing being 
said about the death of the later patriarchs. The 
last sentence reads : "And he died." It is as proper 
to say this of a nation, dynasty, or government, ac- 
cording to the Bible style, as of an individual; for 
the pronoun "he" often stands either for the one or 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHA.M. 87 

for the other ; while " die" is also so employed, as 
may be illustrated by the following passages: 

Niimbers'xxiv. 20 : "And when Balaam looked on 
Amalek he took up his parable, and said, Amalek 
was the first of the nations ; but his latter end shall 
be that he perish for ever." 

Yerse 24: "And ships shall come from the coast 
of Chittim, and shall afflict Asshnr, and shall afflict 
Heber, and he also shall perish for ever." 

Hosea xiii. 1 : " When Ephraim spake trembling, 
he exalted himself in Israel; but when he offended 
in Baal, he diedP That is, the nation of Israel, now 
going under the name of Ephraim, died as a nation 
or government, though millions of the people con- 
tinued to live. If we did not have the origin of the 
name Ephraim, with the modifications of meaning 
through which it afterwards passed, we should 
certainly understand this passage of the individual 
son of Joseph — and how wide it would be of the 
mark! But not wider than the one-man interpreta- 
tion of the patriarchal names of which we have 
been treating. 

We are now through with all the various state- 
ments in the first paragraph in the antediluvian 
table. It is not necessary to treat of those which 



|. 



88 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

follow it, as they are substantially the same; the 
import of the model being ascertained, we have it of 
all the others. 

We may sum up the matter thus: First comes 
the name of the founder of each dynasty, with the 
length of his life ; then the name of the son appointed 
as heir and successor to the promises by faith ; then 
the number of years intervening between the giving 
and the fulfilment of the promise; then the whole 
period of the national existence under the denomina- 
tion of Adam ; and lastly, its termination, fall, or death 
as a government; then comes its successor, the 
house of Seth, which is in turn treated in the same 
manner. 

I have thus endeavored briefly to show how the 
book of Genesis is to be understood as giving a list 
of houses or dynasties, following each other in chro- 
nological order, rather than a succession of individual 
men. Consequently the whole numbers under the 
several patriarchal names must be added together 
in order to ascertain the length of time between the 
days of Adam and the birth of Abraham — a term 
at least equal to 10,500 years. 

"What mighty issues hang on this question ! 
Yiewed in this manner, those venerable tables of 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 89 

Oenesis open up for us a highway through what is 
generally called the pre-historic ages of the world, 
and at once become the most important documents 
of the kind in the possession of man. 

The remaining portion of this little work will be 
devoted to showing how its long chronology is sus- 
tained by reason, by other parts of the Bible, and 
by facts from various sources. 



The Correctness of the Dynastic Theory of In- 
terpretation, WHICH Assigns a Short Life to 
Individuals and a Long Life to the Race, is 
Argued from its Reasonableness, General 
Agreement with the T eachings of the Bible, 
History, Science, Tradition, and Mythology. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE. DYNASTIC SCHEME OF CHRONOLOaY IN HAEMONY 

WITH REASON. 

1. TT is reasonable to suppose that the facts and 
JL events regarded by men of modern times as of 
first importance and worthy of public record, are 
the ones most likely to have been preserved from 
the beginning. Among these, as all experience 
shows, are the doings of kings, the length of reigns, 
the duration of dynasties, and the rise and fall of 
nations; but never the ages of fathers at the birth 
of sons. 

"^nd^ It is the custom of historians to divide the 
national life of which they treat into periods accord- 
ing to the various dynasties or governments under 
which it had existed, and, at the end of their books, 
to add a brief summary or chronological table. In 
these they frequently only mention the general name 
or title of the royal family, with the years of its 
duration, the number of its sovereigns, &c. Such 
tables, from their great utility and convenience of 



94 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

form, are very tenacious of life; and suchj it is 
natural to conclude, are those found preserved in 
the book of Genesis, and not a mere list of individual 
births and deaths. 

3m, Our theory assigns a reasonable age for the 
birth of children, the death of men, and the fail of 
ruling houses in ancient times; while the common 
one is far otherwise. According to the latter, the 
the antediluvian patriarchs, leaving out Noah, lived 
on an average 803 years, and had their sons as early 
as 117 — the one mentioned by name being most 
probably not the oldest ; whereas, if there be any 
truth in the opinion that those who live long mature 
slowly, they should have had them from 275 to 300; 
or men now should become fathers at six to ten 
years of age ! 

Then, all of a sudden, the case is reversed, and 
Noah is regarded as disproportionately old, and 
made to beget his three sons, Shem, Ham, and 
Japheth in his 500th year! But this is not all. In 
the third chapter of Luke there are fifty-five genera- 
tions of men from Christ to Abraham — say in a 
space of 2,000 years. 

Fortunately, we have ample information as to 
what was the common limit of life in that period, 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 95 

and know it was about seventy. By calculation we 
find that sons were born to them at an average of 
36 J 3^ears of age; but from Abraham to Noah, when 
life, as currently held, reached the high mean of 
313 years, it was only 31J, and beyond the flood, 
still more out of proportion — a perfect inversion of 
the whole course and order of nature, without any 
apparent cause or assignable reason ! ! The dynastic 
mode of interpretation, on the other hand, performs 
no such feats, encounters no such difficulties, carries 
no such weight, but glides smoothly through the 
whole stream of time. 

4zfA, Still further, the common theory, when 
worked out, presents other most remarkable facts 
and figures. Thus, if the sons of the antediluvian 
patriarchs succeeded their fathers in the government, 
as stated by Josephus, and held by commentators, 
then they would have had to wait, on an average, 803 
years, in order to reign comparatively very few — 
similar to kings of our day ascending their thrones 
one after another at about sixty-four, and dying of 
old age at seventy. Even on their accession they 
would have been too old, feeble, and inefficient 
generally for the discharge of the public duties. 
Surely no people ever did submit to such an arrange- 



96 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

ment. In more recent times, kings have reigned 
about one-third of their whole lives ; but these only 
an eighth of theirs, while two of them never reached 
the throne at all ! The account stands as follows : 
Adam reigned 930 years, Seth 112, Enos 98, Cainan 
95, Mahalaleel 55, Jared 132, Enoch fell short of 
the throne, having gone to heaven in his youth, 435 
years before the death of his father; then Methuselah 
reigned 669, and Lamech died five years before his 
father ! Does not this kind of snccession seem rather 
strange and freaky? But, as such things were the 
order of the day in those ancient times, it doubtless 
seemed all natural enough to them ! 

5t/i^ Again, men who were the contemporaries ■ 
of Adam himself for more than 175 years were 
drowned in the flood, and mankind, except eight 
persons, were destroyed in less than two lifetimes 
from their origin ! How God seems in haste, con- 
trary to His revealed character of long-suffering and 
patience, to exterminate a race whom He had just 1 1 
created, and to whom, as individuals, He had grants 
the most remarkable longevity! He cannot even 
wait till His word of promise is fulfilled, but cuts 
them off twenty years before the term allotted for f 
their repentance had expired ! ! How could man be- i 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 97 

come so utterly corrupt, "every imagination of the 
thoughts of his heart only evil continually, the earth 
filled with yiolence," and the patience of a merciful 
God exhausted in so short a time as 1,656 years'? 
Such has not been the ordinary com^se of proyidence. 
On the contrary, the dynastic scheme of chronology 
furnishes 7,737 years for their growth and consum- 
mation, and brings all into harmony with the ways 
of man and God. 

6^A, Could men, especially patriarchs, kings, and 
chiefs, pass through such a state 6i corruption and 
violence as this, one after another for ten generations, 
and reach the high average of more than 800 years 
without getting killed in some way ? Then, if those 
days were as full of wars, murders, accidents, and 
nameless dangers as ours, they must have been, 
like Achilles, invulnerable. If our constitutions had 
sufficient vital force within them to send us up to 
that great age, the most of us would fall by some 
kind of violence or accident long before reaching it. 

It is indeed doubtful whether the rulers of any 
nation have ever escaped for half that period. The 
English sovereigns, beginning at A. D. 946, have 
been killed at the intervals of 33, 37, 50, 21, 13, 99, 
128, 158, 166 years — the last 228 having now passed 



98 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES. 

without a violent death. In Germany, the intervals, 
as far as examined, have been 36, 19, 188, 120. In 
France, rather better, about 500 years once coming 
together without such an incident; but as I have 
mislaid the statistics I cannot give the details. In 
China, reckoning from A. D. 589 to the present 
time, the matter stands thus: Two emperors were 
slain in 31 years, five in 287, two in 16, one in 13, 
one in 11, one in 2, four in 176, three in 88, three 
in 276, and none in the last 232. The rate in the 
kingdoms of Israel and Judah is about the same as 
those above given; while, as every one knows, in 
Greece, Rome, and Persia, natural death was the 
exception rather than the rule. 

7^A, Were all the laws of nature reversed some- 
where between the present and the patriarchal ages ; 
and if so, where is the proof ? Are we at liberty to 
interpret the Bible, or any other historical document, 
so as to confuse the whole order of things? Are 
we not wrong when one difficulty after another can 
be piled upon us like " Ossa on Pelion ?" Can we 
rest comfortably under such a pressure? A horse 
whose bones are all out of joint is useless as a horse; 
and such is the condition of the usual interpretations 
of the catalogues of Genesis, together with all the 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 99 

systems of chronology based upon them. They 
should be abandoned at once, and one more con- 
sistent with probability and the general teachings 
of the Scriptures themselves put in their place ; some 
of which will be presented in the next chapter. 






CHAPTEE yil. 

THE DYJSTASTIC THEORY, OR A 1.0NQ CHRONOLOaY, IN^ 

HARMONY WITH THE GENERAL TEACHINGS 

OF THE BIBLE. 

I. rpHE Bible, outside of the places in dispute, as 
J- I have already said, nowhere assigns a great 
age to individual men, but contains passages opposed 
to such an idea. I am now prepared to say that it 
never assigns a short term of existence to the human 
race, but, on the contrary, has various passages im- 
plying a long one, both before and after the flood. 

1^^, The '^ six days of creation," mentioned in the 
first chapter of Genesis, as now universally under- 
stood, stand for six successive epochs, or great cycles 
of time. Hence, if the first chapter calls a geologi- 
cal epoch after a day, the fifth chapter of the same 
book, to be consistent in style, should call a dynastic 
epoch after its founder ; or, in other words, if a day 
become an epoch without changing its name, so a 
man may become a nation without changing his. 
As scholars now add the epochs together to ascer- 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 101 

tain the age of the earth, so in like manner we 
should add the dynasties together to ascertain the 
age of man upon it. If the first chapter describe a 
series of material changes of vast duration, why 
should not the fifth chapter describe a series of po- 
litical changes of vast duration also ? The first six 
chapters are but a inultuin in parvo of what trans- 
pired between the creation and the flood. The field 
of the record was so wide, the time so long, the ob- 
jects so many, and the conditions so varied, that a 
hint w^as made to stand for an explanation, a day 
for an epoch, an individual for a race, a species for 
a genus, a father for a family, a chief for a nation, 
and a type or symbol for things of a moral and spi- 
ritual character. Evening, morning, day, night, herb, 
tree, fish, fowl, cattle, beast, serpent, Adam, Eve, 
Cain, Seth, Enos, and many others that might be 
mentioned, all seem to partake more or less of such 
peculiarity in the first chapters of Genesis. 

2^6?, In the fourth chapter, Cain's line is run to 
within two generations of Noah, and it is there said 
that Jabal, Jubal and Tubal-Cain were the fathers 
or progenitors of such tribes or nations as had be- 
come distinguished for cattle-raising, music, and the 
mechanical arts prior to the five hundredth year of 

7 , 



102 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

Noah. These nations are spoken of in the present 
tense,* as if then in "existence and the contemporaries 
of the writer himself. For the descendants of the 
last named of the line to accomplish all this, and 
become so different in their respective habits of life, 
require far more time, it seems to me, than can pos- 
sibly be gotten out of two generations of men — at 
least 1,277 years, or the lives of Lamech and Noah 
together, considered as consecutive dynasties. If 
this be correct, then how many years would it take 
to carry us back to Cain, their great ancestor? 

3rd, As heretofore said, the first nine verses of the 
sixth chapter return to the " days when men began 
to multiply upon the earth," and pass rapidly over 
nearly the whole interval covered by the table in 
the fifth. They have, as every one can perceive, 
a very ancient flavor, and require long ages to 
thoroughly fill the measure of their demands. At 
a very early day the sons of God intermarried with 
the daughters of men; the giants, or great chiefs, 
lived in or before ^' those days;" for, "after that," 
the offspring of these marriages found time to be- 
come the "mighty men, who were of old the men of 
renown." If these latter persons were the ancients, 
* " Such SLSjdwell in tents, and handle the harp." 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 103 

or the men of old, to the author one hundred years 
prior to the flood, how far into the past would it 
send the "giants," or great chiefs, who had, ap- 
parently, flourished and passed away before the first 
of them were born ? Does not the reader feel that 
such language demands the most of the 7,737 years 
appropriated by me to the antediluvian period of the 
world ? 

Wi^ The deep rooted, universal, and terrible cor- 
ruption attributed to the race at that time, together 
with the exhausted patience of a long-suffering and 
merciful Grod, conspire together in testifying that 
ages on ages had been devoted to the rise, growth, 
and maturity of such extreme wickedness. 

II. This section will be devoted to the period be- 
tween the deluge and the birth of Abraham, or the 
departure of his father Terah from Ur of the 
Chaldees. 

\st^ The tenth chapter of Grenesis is a universal 
history or general outline of what the descendants 
of Noah had accomplished prior to the " division of 
the land" in the days of Peleg, the point where the 
account closes. 

From the nature and magnitude of the things ac- 
complished we may infer the length of thejnterval. 



104 PATRIARCHAL DYKASTIES 

The first paragraph says : " Now these are the gen- 
erations of the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham, and 
Japheth; and to them were sons born after the flood. 
The sons of Japheth: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, 
Tubal, Meshech, and Th^as. The sons of Gomer : 
Ashkenaz, Eiphath, and Togarmah. The sons of 
Javan: Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. 
By these" — or rather the descendants of these — 
"were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; 
every one after his tongue, after their families, in 
their nations." The thing to observe here is the 
fact that, by the days of Peleg, the posterity of 
Japheth had spread themselves from Scythia to 
Spain,* had gotten possession of all the islands or 
maritime regions along the northern coast of the 
Mediterranean Sea, and already become separated 
into different ''languages, families, and nations.^^ 
"What ages must have been consumed in producing 
these results ! They are not those of leaps, bounds, 
or miracles, but the steady operations of natural 
causes. 

The second paragraph says: "The sons of Ham: 
Cush, Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan. The sons of 
Cush: Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sab- 

* See Josephus. 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 105 

techah. The sons of Raamah: Sliebah, and Dedan. 
And Cush begat Nimrod" — that is, was the ancestor 
of Nhnrod. "He began to be a mighty one in the 
earth. He was a mighty hunter (conqueror) before 
the Lord. Wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod 
the mighty conqueror before the Lord. And the 
beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and 
Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of 
that land he went forth into Asshur (Assyria) and 
builded Nineveh, the city of Kehoboth, Calah, and 
Eesen, between Nineveh and Calah; the same is a 
great city." See what the Cushite branch of the 
Hamitic family have accomplished; what a mighty 
empire they have established apparently by conquest ; 
what a number of great walled cities they have built; 
and what a reputation Nimrod, one of their emperors, 
has obtained, all before the end of Peleg's day. I 
need not quote the doings of Mizraim and Canaan, 
the founders of the ancient kingdoms of Egypt and 
Phoenecia, for all the sons of Ham have before that 
date become '^families, tongues, countries, and 
nations." 

Paragraph third says: "Unto Shem also, the 
father of all the children of Heber, the brother of 
Japheth the elder (of the two), even to him were 



106 PATKIAECHAL DYNASTIES 

children born. The children of Shem: Elam^ 
Asshur, Arphaxad,^ Liid, and Aram. And the 
children of Aram: Uz, Hnl, Gether, and Mash.'^ 
These have also become distinct nations in their re- 
spective countries. Arphaxad was the " chosen" son 
of Shem. His family settled in the land of Ur,. 
below the junction of the Tigris and the EuphrateSj, 
and became the Chaldees. "And Arphaxad begat 
Salah, and Salah begat Heber. And unto Heber 
were born two sons; the name of one w^as Peleg;: 
for in his days the land was divided^ ^ — that is, the 
confederacy of the chosen people was divided. His 
elder brother, Joktan, taking off twelve tribes of it,, 
established an independent nation between Mesha 
and Sephar, a mountainous region of the east; while 
Peleg's tribe remained in their original home, and 
continued the succession. How much this reminds 
us of the division of the kingdom of Israel between 
the rival houses of Judah and Ephraim, or their 
chiefs, Rehoboam and Jeroboam. The former,, 
though retaining but tw^o tribes, held the holy city,, 
the temple, the law, and preserved the national life 
and religion; while the latter, taking otf ten tribes,, 
or the body of the nation, organized the semi-idola- 
trous kingdom of Samaria, which, after a few 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. lOT 

centuries, came to an end. Let this '^division of 
the land" mean what it may, it occurre d in the days 
of Peleg, and the important point is, that the tenth 
chapter gives the history of a grand series of events 
v^hich all transpired previous to it — events which, 
from their very nature, seem to require the whole of 
the 1,867 years claimed by the dynastic scheme of 
interpretation. 

Having thus prepared the way, let us now see 
how the matter stands. 

The common mode of reckoning time is based on 
the Hebrew text as found in our English translation. 
It counts the figures as birth-dates, and allows only 
131 years from the flood to the days of Peleg at the 
birth of his son Reu. The descendants of Noah, on 
the most liberal estimate, could not have then ex- 
ceeded 900 persons, and the great majority of them 
would have been children. 

How could they have divided into so many 
"families, tongues, and nations," settled in such 
distant portions of the earth, built great cities, and 
produced such a famous conqueror and monarch as 
Nimrod ? Whence came the subjects of his kingdom ? 
Another plan of reckoning is to follow the Samari- 
tan text, which adds 100 years to the Hebrew in 



108 PATKIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

each case, making the sum of 531 years. This is 
much better than the other, but still falls far short of 
the time required for such grand results. The popu- 
lation descended from Noah could not have equalled 
one million of souls even at that date. Still another 
plan is to adopt the figures of the Septuagint version, 
which adds 200 years, and makes these patriarchs 
over 230 at the birtli of their sons. But this is so 
forced, so unnatural, and so wanting in authority as 
to be unworthy of belief or attention. 

If the names be taken as those of successive houses, 
then we shall have an interval between the flood 
and the '^division of the land" of 1,867 years — not 
one year more, it seems to me, than the events of 
the tenth chapter of Genesis require. 

I leave the intelligent reader to judge of this for 
himself, and proceed with the argument. 

'^nd. The eleventh chapter of Genesis does not be- 
gin its story where the tenth left ofl', but goes back 
to a point of time apparently very near to the de- 
luge, to a time when the whole posterity of Noah 
formed only one community. The first nine verses 
of the chapter are confessedly obscure ; the famous 
^'confusion of tongues and dispersion of mankind," 
of which they speak, probably refer to the utter 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 109 

breaking up of the community or government of 
]!^oah5 350 years after the flood, the time when he is 
said to have died (Chap. ix. 28)- At all events, these 
things can be readily explained in the following 
manner : 

As the patriarchal names were also dynastic titles, 
the man Noah, who built the ark, was neither the first 
nor the last of his house; perhaps he was the eighth, 
as he is so styled in 2 Peter ii. 5. We must sup- 
pose the length of his life corresponded to that of 
his ancestors, and we therefore put it down at 180 
years, 130 before and 50 after the flood. We 
would divide it thus, because his son Shem was 
then 100 years old, and because it is reasonable to 
reckon him about thirty years j^ounger than his 
father. 

Thus Noah, the builder of the ark, was the patri- 
arch or head of the house for flfty years subsequent 
to the flood. On his death-bed he would naturally 
hand it over, title and all^ to his eldest son,* whose 
family retained it for the next 300 years. Now, 
during those 350 years ''the whole earth was of one 

* Ham, we infer, as the curse fell on his house through Canaan, 
most probably his eldest son and representative. ** Tounger son''' 
— Gen. ix. 24 — refers to Canaan. 



110 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

language and one speech" — that is, of one mind, one 
heart, and one enthusiasm. ^' And it came to pass, | 
as they journeyed from the east, that they found a I 
plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. '! 
And they said one to another. Come on, let us make 
brick, and burn them thoroughly, and let us build 
us a city, and a tower whose top may reach unto 
heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scat- 
tered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. '^ 
The wording shows that they were possessed with a 
burning zeal for concentration and union, a zeal car- 
ried beyond the bounds of reason. "And the Lord 
came down to see the city and the tower which the 
children of men builded. And the Lord said. The 
people is one, and they have all one language (or 
purpose), and this they begin to do; and now no- 
thing will be restrained from them, which they have 
imagined to do. Go to, let us go down and con- 
found their language, that they may not understand 
(or give heed to) one another's speech. So the Lord 
scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of 
all the earth. And they left off to build the city. 
Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because 
the Lord did there confound the language of all the 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. Ill 

earth; and from thence did the Lord scatter them 
abroad upon the face of all the earth." 

Thus fell the union; and thus fell the dynasty or- 
government of Noah, after a long and glorious reign 
of 950 years. Here bursts the first grand mania of 
the new world. They undertook a task too great 
for their ability. After the cooling down of their 
first enthusiasm, they divided into different parties 
and opinions, as to the manner of conducting the 
work, till, falling into a general quarrel, in which 
one would not listen to the language or proposals of 
another, they finally broke up in utter confusion. 

The heads of the several parties or tribes now led 
forth their adherents, and by degrees established 
themselves in the surrounding regions, where they 
became the various ''families, tongues and nations" 
mentioned in the tenth chapter of Genesis. 

The family of Arphaxed settled in the vicinity of 
the Persian Gnlf, and became the great Chaldean 
nation, having the " sacred city of TJr for its capital," 
according to Mr. George Eawlinson and other- 
writers." 

3rd. The age of Shem is nowhere given; but thot 
table beginning with chapter xi. 10, goes back and. 
counts time from his birth, 100 years before the 



112 



PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 



flood. Taking this view of the question, Shem and 
family were 150 years subject to the government of 
Noah, his father, 300 to the government of his eldest 
brother (ruling under the title of Noah till the fall 
of the house at the dispersion from Babel), and 150 
as an independent community; in all, 600 years, 
when the house of Shem was succeeded by that of 
the chosen Arphaxad. Thus — 

To the house of Shem (after the flood) are assigned 502 years. 
Arphaxad are assigned . . 438 *' 
Salah 
Heber 
Peleg 
Reu 
Serug 
Nahor 
Terah in Ur 



At this time another historic epoch occurred. 
The patriarch Terah broke up, at the command of 
God, and departed, with his infant son Abraham, 
from the ancient seat of the family, in Ur of the 
Ohaldees, to go into the land of Canaan. For some 
i'eason he tarried by the way in the region of Haran, 
where he finally died, at the age of 145 years, as 
says the Samaritan text, which is undoubtedly the 



433 




464 




239 




239 




230 




148 




70 




2,763 





FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 113 

correct one in this particular. Then Abraham arose, 
being 75 years old, and came into the land of Canaan. 

4tth, The kingdom of Nimrod mnst have flourished 
prior to the '' division of the land in the days of 
Peleg," yet long after the futile attempt to build 
the city and tower of Babel; for, though the ''con- 
fusion" broke up the work on the wall and toweVy 
and gave name to the place, it still became a city 
before the time of Mmrod, as we see from Gen. x. 
10, 11, 12. There it is said, "The beginning of his 
kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad and Calneh, in 
the land of Shinar," as if those cities were in ex- 
istence before he took possession of them, while it 
is immediately added that he went out of that land 
into Asshur an^ huilded Nineveh, Eehoboth, Calah, 
and Eesen." This kingdom of Nimrod was doubt- 
less the first Cushite monarchy in Babylonia, but 
not the last. 

^th. There are also certain other statements and 
circumstances mentioned in Genesis which give un- 
mistakable evidence of much more than 367 years 
from the deluge to Abraham's entrance into Canaan. 
Gen. xii. 6, says: "And Abram passed through the 
land unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of 
Moreh; and the Canaanite was then in the landP 



114 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

We know from this, and various other allusions, 
that the inhabitants were then very numerous, and 
dwelling in walled towns; that the cities of Sodom, 
Gomorrah,, Admah, Zeboim, Belah, &c., were capi- 
tals of Canaanitish States, with their kings residing 
in them ; that these had been for twelve years tribu- 
tary to Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, who was also 
confederate with three others reigning in the distant 
regions of the Euphrates; and that they were then 
sufficiently powerful to push their conquests west- 
ward to the plain of the Jordan, "Mount Seir, and 
^the wilderness" of Arabia. 

We also know that the Canaanitish people had 
already reached their full development, and were 
beginning to enter on that stage of decline which 
invariably follows idolatry and corruption of morals. 
The cup of iniquity of the cities in the plain w^as 
already full to the brim, and God, in His wrath, 
overthrew them with fire and brimstone from hea- 
ven. For them to have become so exceedingly cor- 
rupt and lascivious, we infer that they must have 
been very old, wealthy and luxurious communities 
long before that fearful destruction which was wit- 
nessed by the eyes of Abraham himself. 

When then, we ask, did the descendants of Canaan 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 115 

settle in Palestine and give their name to it ? In 
what force did they come, and what was its condition 
on their arrival ? We know it was not a wilderness, 
but occupied by the numerous tribes of the Re- 
phaims, Zuzims, Emims, and others. Where did 
they come from, when did they arrive, and how long 
had they dwelt there before being dispossessed by 
the Canaanites? These are some of the questions 
which must be satisfactorily answered by those who 
contend that the chronology of the Hebrew Scrip- 
tures is short. Lenonnant and Chevalier, earnest 
Christian men, in their recent most excellent Manual 
of Ancient History, say: ^^ Palestine when entered 
by the Canaanites, 2,400 or 2,300 B. C, was not a 
wilderness. The greater part of its towns were 
already built, and the country around them inhabited 
by a numerous population called the Rephaim, who 
were either exterminated or forced to emigrate by 
the Canaanites." 

Mr. George Eawlinson, in his Ancient Monarchies, 
says: "The establishment of a Cushite kingdom in 
lower Babylonia dates probably from, at least, the 
twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth century before our 
era."* That is, four or five hundred years before 
* Not under Nimrod, but a later one, I suppose. 



116 PATRIARCHAL DYJSTASTIES 

the birth of Abraham, or the removal of Terah from 
Ur of the Chaldees. Further on he also says, that 
^Hhese Cushites appear to have been a colony which 
came by sea, and whose conquests in Babylonia were 
followed rapidly by a Semitic emigration from the 
country — an emigration which took a northerly 
direction. The Assyrians withdrew from Babylonia,, 
which they still alw^ays regarded as their parent 
land, and occupying the upper non-alluvial portion 
of the Mesopotamian plain, commenced the build- 
ing of great cites in the tract upon the middle 
Tigris. The Phoenecians, or Canaanites, removed 
from the shores of the Persian Gulf, and, journey- 
ing towards the northw^est, formed settlements upon 
the coast of Canaan, where they became a rich and 
prosperous people. The family of Abraham, and 
probably other Aramean ones, ascended the Eu- 
phrates, withdrawing from a yoke which w^as oppres- 
sive, or, at any rate, unpleasant. Abundant room 
was thus made for the Cushite emigrants, who 
rapidly established their preponderance over the 
whole of the southern region." 

The quotations from these learned authors are 
substantially sustained by statements found in the 
book of Genesis and other early portions of the 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 117 

Bible, and there are several ways of approximating 
the length of time which must have elapsed between 
the flood and Abraham's entrance into Canaan. 

1st, If the Canaanites, on arriving there, five or 
six centuries before him, found the land " not a 
wilderness, but the greater part of its towns already 
built, and the coimtry round about them inhabited 
by a numerous population of Eephaim and other 
tribes, it is evident that these original inhabitants 
must have found time, either there or elsewhere, to 
become a "strong and numerous people." 

'2?id, The early Cushites must have been members 
of the community which attempted to build the city 
and tower of Babel. After the "dispersion," they 
seem to have settled on the upper Mle and along 
the borders of the Red Sea, where they finally be- 
came a powerful nation, at least powerful enough to 
send off a colony by water in sufficient force to drive 
both the Elamite and Oanaanite inhabitants from 
the regions of lower Babylonia and the Persian 
Gulf, about 2,500 B. C, or 500 years before the 
birth of Abraham. 

Srd, When "Abraham went down into Egypt to 
sojourn," because of the famine in Canaan, he came 

in contact with "Pharaoh and his princes," and 

8 



118 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

found the country flourishing under a regularly or- 
ganized government, with a powerful priesthood at 
the head of an elaborate religious ritual. Hiero- 
glyphic writing had long been in existence, and some 
of its largest pyramids standing both as monuments 
and silent witnesses of its great wealth, power, and 
antiquity. All these things, taken together, pre- 
suppose, not four centuries only, but the whole of 
the 2,763 years claimed in this work. 

But some may say the flood was partial, being a 
punishment inflicted on the people of God then 
dwelling in the land of Eden, and should not be 
understood as destroying the inhabitants in other 
parts of the world. Yery well. Both the truth 
and force of this objection may be fully admitted, 
but it will not at all help the matter; for all the 
mighty achievements above referred to, except those 
of the Eephaim tribes, were performed by the de- 
scendants of Noah himself, and it would have re- 
quired more time and force for their accomplishment 
in populous regions than in vacant ones. 

4:^A, The posterity of the patriarch Noah was, 
according to Genesis itself, most evidently very 
great on Abraham's entrance into Canaan; but ac- 
ocording to the received mode of reckoning the table 



I 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 119 

of the Hebrew text, it was only 367 years after the 
flood. Now, calculating the population on the same 
principles as was done in the case of Adam, it then 
consisted of less than 30,000 souls, a sum not equal, 
I suppose, to a third of the inhabitants of the one 
city of Sodooi ! This sum multiplied into itself, or 
900,000,000, will very probably come much nearer 
the truth. Even China was then full of people. 

htli^ And in general, let us take the perception 
of David as to the number of generations which had 
passed prior to his day. He composed a historical 
psalm, to be sung on the happy occasion "when 
the Ark of God was brought from Obed-edom, and 
set in the midst of the tent which he had prepared 
for it." It is found both in the sixteenth chapter of 
1st Chronicles, and also in the one hundred and 
fifth Psalm, with some verbal differences. I under- 
stand the Psalmist as recounting the dealings of God 
with His people from the beginning of the world 
down to his own times. He says — Ps. cv., 1 to 11 — 
" O give thanks unto the Lord; call upon His name : 
make known His deeds among the people. Sing 
unto Him, sing psalms unto Him : talk ye of all His 
wondrous works. Glory ye in His holy name: let 
the heart of them rejoice that seek the Lord. Seek 



120 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

the Lord, and His strength : seek His face evermore. 
Remember the marvelous works that He hath done ; 
His wonders, and the judgments of His mouth ; O 
ye seed of - Abraham His servant, ye children of 
Jacob His chosen. He is the Lord our God : His 
judgments are in all the earth. He hath remeinbered 
His covenant f 07' ever^ the loord which He commanded 
to a thousand generations. Which He made (ratified) 
with Abraham : and His oath unto Isaac ; and con- 
firmed the same unto Jacob for a law^ and to 
Israel for an everlasting covenant." 

The Psalmist, it seems to me, here goes . back in 
mind, like St. Paul in Hebrews xi., and looks upon 
the Lord as having remembered or kept His covenant 
of mercy and the word of His law during all the 
past ages of man. These appear to him so long and 
many that he does not hesitate to call them a 
"thousand generations." Though not to be taken 
literally, but poetically, both the conception and 
the language are in the past tense, and far too grand 
for the fourteen generations between Abraham and 
himself. Even poetry cannot call fourteen a thou- 
sand. He must then have counted them from the 
beginning of God's "judgments, covenants, promises, 
and commands to the children of men." On the 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 121 

authority of the Apostle Paul we know that, by faith 
in the covenant and promises of God, the "Elders, 
or ancient worthies, obtained a good report." "By 
that faith Abel offered unto God a mure excellent 
sacrihce than Cain ; Enoch was translated that he 
should not see death; Noah, being warned of God, 
prepared an ark to the saving of his house, con- 
demned the world, and became heir of the righteous- 
ness which is by faith ; and Abraham, when he was 
called to go out into a place which he should after 
receive for an inheritance, obeyed and went out, 
not knomng whither he went," &c. See Heb. xi. 

David regarded the word and promises which the 
Lord had given and remembered for a thousand 
generations, as ratified with Abraham, as renewed 
with an oath to Isaac, as confirmed unto Jacob for a 
law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant. From 
this last point his thought embraced the future, and 
not when he mentioned the covenant in connection 
with the name of Abraham ; for if so, would there 
not be a glaring tautology in the language ? 

ISTow, there are only thirty-four generations from 
David to Adam, according to the third chapter of 
Luke, and even these are far too few to be called a 
thousand, under any kind of license whatever. 



122 PATRIAKCHAL DYJS'ASTIES 

Then, if my view of the psalm be correct — and of 
this every one can judge for himself — David con- 
ceived of the human race as having existed at least 
as long as that for which I am contending. 

I am now through with my argument from the 
Bible, and the conclusion to which I come is, that a 
short race-life, as well as a long individual-life, are 
both alike foreign to the Hebrew^ Scriptures. Their 
authors seem never to have dreamed of such ideas,, 
but everywhere take the reverse for granted. Hence 
all objections to them on such grounds are wholly 
gratuitous, and made in ignorance of their contents. 
To reject the Bible, or any other grave book, with- 
out studying it, is, to say the least, unscholarlike^ 
and can never secure the respect of thoughtful men. 

The prevailing notions of the Jews on the subjects 
of patriarchal life and chronology cannot he shown 
to have existed, I suppose, previous to the Babylon- 
ish captivity. Theirs, like ours, have grown out of 
a misunderstanding of the tables in Genesis. These, 
since the captivity, have been as dead to them as to 
us, while their sources of information were never 
equal to ours of the present day. Moreover, it is 
perfectly plain, from their Talmud and other writ- 
ings, that they are peculiarly inclined to misinterpret 



1 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 123 

their own sacred books. NoUvithstanding all this. 
Christians have, till very recently, simply followed 
their lead in these matters. But times are now 
changing, and as we have been compelled to abandon 
their views of the six days of creation, so we shall 
also be compelled to abandon their views of Scripture 
life and chronology. 






CHAPTEK VIII. 



ARGUMENT FROM HISTORY. 



I. TTISTORY shows that man has been long on 
JL-L the earth, and in several ways corroborates 
our scheme of Scripture chronology. 

Ist^ As the six successive epochs of creation, and 
the nineteen successive periods of human history in 
the book of Genesis, have each an appropriate name, 
so the tw^enty-five imperial houses or dynasties of 
China have each an appropriate name also — a 
resemblance w^hich is very striking and suggestive. 

Manetho also gives specific numbers to his thirty- 
one Egyptian dynasties w^hich serve the purpose of 
names ; while Berosus gives both names and numbers 
to his Babylonian kingdoms. Such, it would seem, 
has always been the course pursued by historians ; 
for they instinctively arrange their epochs, periods, 
and dynasties according to their relations- in time. 
They also name, number, epitomize, and tabulate them 
after a common mental law^ : and bv the li^-ht of this law 
all such documents must be read and interpreted ; and. 



PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES. 



125 



%id^ Eveiy one will be struck with the fact, when 
he sees how the years under the several patriarchal 
names correspond to those of dynasties, empires, 
kingdoms, and special forms of government, in 
various nations of the world. 

A comparison with some of the principal ones will 
make this correspondence sufficiently manifest. 

HOUSE OR DYNASTY OF ADAM. 







Hebrew Text. 




Samaritan 


Text. 


Adam, .... 930 years, 


930 years. 


Seth, . 


. 


912 " 




912 


i( 


Enos, 


. 


905 ^' 




905 


i( 


Cainan, 


• « 


910 '' 




910 


a 


Mahalaleel, 


. . 


895 '* 




895 


a 


Jared, 


, 


962 " 




847 


a 


Enoch, 


, , 


365 '' 




365 


li 


Methuselah, 


. , 


969 '' 




720 


a 


JLamech, 


, 


111 '' 




653 


a 


ISfoah (to the flood), 


600 '* 




600 


a 


Shem (after the flood)^ 


502 *' 




502 


a 


Arphaxad, 


438 '' 




438 


a 


Salah, 




433 '' 




433 


it 


Heber, 




464 '' 




404* 


a 


Peleg, 




239 " 




239 


16 


Eeu, 




239 *' 




239 


C( 


Serug, •. 




230 ** 




230 


(i 


Nahor, 




148 '' 




148 


it 


Terah in Ur, 




70 '^ 




70 


a 




10,988 '' 




10,440 


a 


Or, following the Samaritan text in the antediln- 






Tian, and the He 


brew in th 


e postdiluvian tab 


les, 


10,500 


a 



^ Supposed to be a clerical error for 464. 



126 



PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 



CHINESE DYNASTIES.* 



Hea, 


439 years. Liang 2, 


70 years. 


Shang, . 


644 * 


Ch'an, 


32 ' 




Cheu 2, 


876 '' 


Sui, 


30 ' 




T'sin, 


40 ' 


T'ang 2, . 


. 300 ' 


' 


Han 4, 


474 ' 


Yuen, 


88 ' 


5 


Tsin 3, 


173 ' 


Ming, 


276 ' 




Sung 3, . 


320 " 


T'sing, 


232 * 




T'si, 


23 '' 








EGYPTIAN DYNASTIES. 




I., . 


253 jei 


irs. XVIIL, • . 


241 years 


IL, 


303 


XIX., 


. 174 ' 


i 


III., 


214 ' 


XX., 


. 178 ' 




IV., 


284 ' 


XXL, 


, 130 * 


i 


v., 


248 


XXIL, 


170 ' 




VL, 


203 


XXIII. , . 


89 ' 




VII.? 


75 


XXIV., 


6 ' 




VIII., . 


142 ' 


XXV., 


50 ' 




IX., 


109 


XXVI., 


. 138 ' 




X., 


185 


XXVII. , . 


. 121 ' 




XI. and X 


IL, 213 


XXVIIL, . 


7 ' 


i 


XIII. , 


453 


XXIX., 


21 * 




XIY., 


184 * 


XXX., 


38 ' 




XY. XVI. 


XVIL, 511 ' 


XXXI. 


8 '^ 






Enc 


led 339 B. 0. 






ASSYI 


IIAN EMPIKES. 




I., . . 


526 yea 


rs. II., . 


122 yea: 


rs. 



* Those bearing- the same title are thrown together. 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 



127 



THE BABYLONIAN DYNASTIES OF BEROSCS, AS RE- 
STORED BY RAWLINSON. 



I. 


Chaldean, 


? 


XL 


Median, 


234 


III. 


? 


48 


IV. 


Chaldean, 


458 



? years. 



V. Arabian, 245 years.. 
VI. ? 526 'V 

VII. 122 '' 

VIII. 87 " 



JEWISH PERIODS. 

The Pilgrimage, 545 years. The House of Israel, 254 years. 
The Judges, 400 " The Captivity, 70 ** 

TheHouseof David, 468 " The Restoration, 590 '' 



ROMAN FORMS OF GOVERNMENT, 

The Kingdom, 244 years. The Republic, 481 years. 

The Empire, 504 years. 

FRENCH DYNASTIES. 

Merovingian, 241 years. Orleans line, 91 years. 



Capetian, 341 *' 

Valois branch, 107 *' 



Bourbon branch, 260 " 



RUSSIAN DYNASTIES. 
Romanoff, 41 years-. Holstein, 114 years. 



GERMAN DYNASTIES. 

Carlovingian, 119 years. Luxemburg line, 129 years. 



Saxon line, 105 " 

Salic '' 114 *' 



Hapsburg 
Lorraine 



ii 205 " 
'' 134 *' 



Hohenstaufens, 170 *' 



128 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

ENGLISH HOUSES. 



Saxons, 


190 years. 


York, 


24 years. 


Danes, 


50 '' 


Tudor, 


118 *' 


Normans, 


8S " 


Stuart, 


111 '' 


Plantagenets, 


245 '' 


Hanover, 


162 '' 


Lancaster, 


62 *' 







Choo Foo Tsz^ a celebrated Chinese philosopher 
and historian of the twelfth century, has well re- 
marked that, ''In the revolutions of time human 
affairs are not stable more than two or three hundred 
years." 

By examining the duration of the above govern- 
ments, w^e will readily perceive that the patriarchal 
names, even when considered as those of dynasties, 
are still abreast of any that have ever existed. They 
w'ere perhaps religious rather than political com- 
munities; and since religious organizations are the 
most permanent of all human institutions, this may 
be sufficient to account for their surpassing length. 

The present royal family of China is believed, by 
competent judges, to have transmitted the throne 
without break, from father to son, longer than any 
other in the annals of history, showing a regular 
descent of 231 years. 

Ordinarily breaks frequently occur; sons are 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 129 

adopted, a brother, uncle, nephew, or some member 
of a collateral branch comes in to continue the 
government (sometimes more than once) before the 
final overthrow and change of title takes place. 
Tables have neither time nor space for these details; 
hence we frequently find the figm-es increasing with 
the brevity of the catalogue or the remoteness of 
the dynasties mentioned. 

II. Some of the above named governments began 
in the remote depths of antiquity ; but even beyond 
them appear the dim outlines of still more remote 
ones. For instance, at the beginning of the Hia, 
2,205 B. C, China was occupied by aboriginal 
tribes, who brought tribute to its rulers. Then 
beyond the Hia were the ''Five Sovereigns,'' with 
Fuh-he at their head, whose united reigns covered a 
space, according to Dr. Williams, of 647 years; ac- 
cording to Professor Kidd, of 1,164. The exact date 
of Fuh-he's reign cannot be fixed, but it is generally 
supposed to be in the neighbourhood of 3,000 B. C. 
Some traditions say his posterity reigned for fifteen 
generations, over a period of 17,787 years. 

Still beyond him comes the "Jin Woiig^''^ or fabu- 
lous King of Men, whose djmasty lasted 45,000 years 
under nine brothers. In those days, says the story, 



130 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

" The hills and rivers were divided into nine regions. 
The people occupied but one territory, observed re- 
spectful manners, aiid pure customs. The kingly 
office was not a pageantry, nor were the functions 
of state ministers empty titles. Good government 
was established by the rulers, and correct institutions 
diffused among the common people." 

Again, this golden age was preceded by " Te 
Wong^^^ or the King of the World, whose rule con- 
tinued 18,000 years under eleven brothers. Prior 
to him was ''Tien Wong^^^ or the King of Heaven, 
who reigned 18,000 years; and still beyond him w^as 
" Pwan Koo^^ the first man, who spent 18,000 more 
years in ''chiseling out the earth, cutting passages 
through the mountains, teaching navigation, and 
otherwise preparing it for the habitation of men." 

These things, though fables, show plainly that the 
origin of the Chinese people lies concealed in the 
depths of a remote past. Such stories and dates 
would be unworthy of attention were it not for the 
fact that they contain shadowy glimpses of the gov- 
ernments and history of those lost ages. It will be 
a difficult task to convince intelligent Chinamen that 
man has existed no more than 6,000 years. 

'^nd^ The Chaldean empire presents a similar 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 131 

record. Accordmo; to Rawliiison, the Second 
Dynasty began 2,286 B. C. He says: "Berosus 
declared that six dynasties had reigned in Chaldea 
since the great flood of Xisuthrus, or Noah. To the 
first, consisting of eighty-six kings, he allowed the 
extravagant period of 34,080 years. Evechons, its 
founder, had enjoyed the royal dignity for 2,400, 
and Chomasbelus, his son and successor, 300 longer 
than his father. The other eighty-four kings had 
filled up the remaining space of 28,980 years, their 
reigns thus averaging 345 apiece." 

Unfortunately the works of Berosus have been 
lost; only a mutilated outline of his chronological 
scheme being preserved to us through extracts by 
Eusebius, and one or two others. It is clear that 
something is wrong with the numbers above given. 
Through frequent transcription, they may have be- 
come dislocated; for they seem to bear marks of 
this on their face. I venture to suggest that the 
34,080 years were meant to cover the period hefore 
the flood of Xisuthrus, 2,400 years, and the eighty- 
six kings that of the first Chaldean djmasty after it.* 
This would require an average reign of only twenty- 

* This was probably the kingdom of Nimrod. 



132 PATRIARCHAL DYJS^A STIES 

eight years for eacli of these kings, which is clearlj 
within the bounds of reason. 

■■'' Then, on this supposition, if we add the 2,400 
years to the 2,286 B. C, the commencement of the 
second dynasty, we shall have 4,686 B. 0. for the 
great flood of Xisuthrus. The date of Noah's flood^ 
according to our scheme of interpreting the tables 
of Genesis, is 4,763 B. C, leaving a difference be- 
tween the two dates of only seventy-seven years^ 
which is a fraction of no importance in a question 
of this kind. Berosus certainly regarded men as 
having dwelt a long time in the region of Babylonia, 
both before and after the flood ; but as I have not 
his "fragments" at hand, I touch on the matter with 
great reserve, and beg not to be held responsible 
for any errors which may have crept into my re- 
marks. 

Modern researches in the valley of the Euphrates 
tend to confirm the truth of Berosus' convictions. 
The account of the flood, recently found at Nineveh, 
was translated from a dead language into the cunei- 
form character for the library of Sardanapalus, ac- 
cording to the opinion of Mr. Smith, the distin- 
guished Assyrian scholar. The story, even in the 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 133 

original, had become highly mythological, which is 
an unmistakable sign of great age. 

Zrd^ Both the history and monuments of Egypt 
give proof of the highest antiquity. On any theory 
of explaining Manetho's thirty-one dynasties, it is 
very high. M, Lenormont, regarding them as all 
consecutive, fixes the date of the first at 5,004 B. C. 
Baron Bunsen, regarding them as mostly consecutive, 
fixes it at 3,643 B. C. Mr. Poole, maintaining that 
they were largely contemporaneous, puts it at 2,717 
B. C. Even after every effort to brins; them within 
the bounds of the received Scripture chronology, he 
is compelled to place their beginning 425 years 
prior to Usher's deluge. 

The ^^'List of Kings' recently discovered in the 
Temple of Abydos, represents Seti I, accompanied 
by his son Eameses II, in the act of paying homage 
to seventy-six of his ancestors, beginning with 
Menes." Now, the end of the reim of Rameses 
is fixed by Egyptologists at about 1,340 B. C. By al- 
lowing twenty-three years as the average reign of each 
of these seventy-six kings of Egypt, and multiply- 
ing the two together, the sum of 1,748 years will 
be produced, which, added to the 1,340 B. C, will 
place Menes, the head of the first dynasty, at 3,088 

9 



134: PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES. 

B. C. Again, if the seventy -five ancestors of Christ, 
given in the third chapter of Luke, cover a period 
of 4,004: years, certainly the seventy-six ancestors of 
Rameses should do the same; and this would send 
Menes full 3,000 years beyond Usher's flood. I 
however regard Bunsen's date as decidedly preferable 
to all others ; and I have also seen it frequently 
stated that the most recent discoveries in Egypt tend 
to confirm it. We thus see that our scheme of 
Scripture chronology exactly meets the wants of the 
case, by placing the flood 1,120 j^ears beyond Bun- 
sen's date, which allows Menes sufficient time to be 
the descendant of Noah, and the founder of a State 
on the banks of the Nile. 

Manetho, notwithstanding the very high point to 
which he carried the history of Egypt, still believed 
that kingdoms flourished long previous to the reign 
of Menes, as he assigns 12,84:3 years to " heroes and 
the gods." He was not so wide of the mark after 
all, it would seem, as the Bible is now shown to sup- 
ply 8,857 of them, counting from Bunsen's date. 

4:thj I need only mention the belief among the 
people of India of many eras of human existence, 
the last of which began 3,100 years before the birth 
of Christ. 



CHAPTER XI. 

ARGUMENT FROM SCIENCE, TRADITION, AND MYTHOLOGY. 

OUR fathers, only a few centuries ago, accepted 
less than 6,000 years as the term of human ex- 
istence without the least misgiving ; but modern re- 
searches in various departments of history and science 
have exploded this opinion, and put in its place some 
vast indefinite number. This may be farther from 
the truth than that which it has supplanted. Yet it 
cannot be less than the 14,376 years above claimed, 
as I shall still proceed to show. 

1st, Argument from Geology. 

The argument from geology may be briefly stated 
thus: It holds that, during the ages which have al- 
ready run their rounds in connection with our earth, 
a long lease, of life has been allotted to each of the 
many extinct species of animals, but comparatively 
only a very short one to separate individuals. The in- 
ference is, that such has been the case with man also. 



136 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

Again, ''the present rate of deposition on the 
earth's surface must be taken as the normal or stan- 
dard rate for the recent formations." Now, human 
remains and implements have been found in gl^eat 
abundance in beds of gravel and other deposits, as- 
sociated with animal bones, under such conditions as 
to make it impossible to suppose that they had been 
there less than 14,000 years. Many say much more. 

2716?. Argument from Archaeology. 

Of late years great attention has been given to 
this department, and most interesting discoveries 
have been made in almost eveiy portion of the globe. 
The mounds and other monuments that man has 
left behind him are acknowledged on all hands to be 
most hoary with age ; so much so, that Mr. Ban- 
croft does not hesitate to attribute to some of those 
found in America even " thousands of ages." I 
have seen them in great numbers myself, and I feel 
safe in saying that the Mississippi valley must have 
been inhabited in very ancient times by a powerful 
and civilized people. If the Chinese race should be 
swept away, they would not leave behind them mon- 
uments equal in size and workmanship to those of 
America. 






FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 137 

Zrd. Argument from Ethnology. 
Ethnology maintains the unity of mankind, and 
requires fully as much time as my theory claims to 
bring all its varying tribes and races back to a com- 
mon ancestry. It holds that the three most strongly 
marked races are exceedingly tenacious of their dis- 
tinguishing characteristics — the negro having un- 
doubtedly remained unchanged for the last 3,000 
years, with the fair inference of three times that 
amount. 

^th. Argument from Philology. 

Philology teaches that languages are of slow 
growth, and, like the races of man, are also very tena- 
cious of their own peculiarities ; that the differences 
existing among them are very great, and known to 
have been so from the beginning of the historic age. 
Yet they all, whether monosyllabic, agglutinate, or 
amalgamate, present certain features in common 
which prove, or strongly suggest, a common origin. 
Many of them rose, flourished, and passed away be- 
fore the Christian era ; while those which now pre- 
vail retain certain '' survivals," or fossil forms and 
significations, indicative of a long career. In words 
are found the most ancient of human remains ; and 



138 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

though it is impossible to assign to their origin any 
definite elate, it must, beyond all doubt, be put very 
high in order to meet the requirements of the case. 
Baron Bunsen claims for the origin, growth, and 
divisions of language a term of 20,000 years. Prof. 
"Whitney, and other philologists, still more. 'No one, 
I venture to say, with even a tolerable knowledge of 
the subject, can believe that they were all one under 
14,000 years ago. The Chinese language has a his- 
tory of its own covering a third of that time ; and 
we may well ask, when were the English, Greek, 
and other amalgamates the same with it? If these 
wide differences were produced by a sudden " con- 
fusion of tongues" at the building of the Tower of 
Babel, then that event must be placed a' great way 
off. But if it was, as some maintain, not a confu- 
sion of articulation, but a confusion of talk—ii grand 
quarrel that broke up the v^^ork, and caused the dis- 
persion so graphically described in the eleventh chap- 
ter of Genesis, then it did not directly affect the 
course of linguistic development. Let this question 
be decided as it may, it matters not as to the sub- 
ject in hand, for philology says it has been a very 
great while since all the languages of the world 
were the same. 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 139 

^th. Argument from Tradition. 

The traditions found in Babylonia, Egypt, China, 
India, and elsewhere, all point to the nnity and re- 
mote origin of the human race. 

In studying these traditions we should remember 
that associated objects, when viewed from a distance, 
lose their identity and blend into one. So the doings 
of a whole nation or age may become associated 
with the name of some prominent individual, strik- 
ing emblem, or national soubriquet, and thus em- 
bodied, be handed dowm to future generations. 

In this way, the whole history of England may, 
in the progress of ages, when some " New Zealander 
shall stand on the ruins of London bridge," and try 
to decipher the past from bits of stone, be ascribed 
to an ancient giant called John Bull. His wife, 
Britannia, may then be the goddess of the sea, and 
their son, Jonathan, the Hero or Hercules of North 
America. Then their temples, statues, and worship 
may prevail through all the present Anglo-Saxon 
portions of the globe. But we hope for better things 
in the future. When events become too grand, num- 
erous, and complicated in their relations for the 
ready grasp of the mind, it begins instinctively to 
concentrate, individualize, or personify them; and 



140 



PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 



thus the stories of the creation of the world, the fall 
of man, the flood, the long life, and wonderful ex- 
ploits of certain ones of the olden times, show 
clearly that they lived in ages far away, fully far 
enough for nations to become individual men, for 
men to become giants, heroes, and gods, before the 
dawn of authentic history. 

Thus we see that these traditions, when properly 
considered, also join their testimony with the other 
witnesses in supporting our views of Biblical chron- 
ology. 

%tli. Argument from Mythology or Religion. 

Mythology or religion, as a science, treats of the 
fundamental ideas of the human race, togetlier with 
the various systems which tliey have produced. At 
first these ideas, according to the most ancient re- 
cords and evidences, were monotheistic. But peo- 
ples, in their migrations from tlieir central home and 
worship, met with wars, floods, earthquakes, famines, 
pestilences, and other trying conditions. Tliese de- 
veloped leaders of remarkable wisdom, skill, virtue, 
or prowess. The people, seeing these, gradually, 
but naturally, gave personality^ to the forces able to 
produce such results; clothed them with Divine at- 



FROM ADAM TO ABKAHAM. 



141 



tributes ; associated with them the creations of their 
own excited imaginations; and so iinallymade them 
images, shrine sand temples; adopted in their honor 
certain observances and rites, which imperceptibly 
multiplied and grew into all the various systems of 
false worship found among men. 

In this way mythology becomes a record of facts, 
and, to som^e extent, contains w^ithin it the history 
and chronology of the race. 

Nothing human is so slow of growth, and so slow 
of decay, as religious systems. I^ow Monotheism, 
the original form of worship, had arisen, flourished, 
and decaved: then Polytheism had succeeded to it, and 
grown into full blast in Babylonia, Egypt, and China, 
all before our first acquaintance with tliose nations. 

'' The religion of Chaldea," says Mr. Rawdinson, 
^'frorn the earliest times to which the monuments 
carry us l)ack, w^as, in its outward aspect, a Poly- 
theism of a very elaborate character. Various 
deities, w^hom it vv'as not considered at all necessary 
to trace to a single stock, divided the allegiance of 
the people, and even of the kings, who regarded with 
equal respect, and glorified with equally exalted 
epithets, some fifteen or sixteen different personages. 
Next to these principal gods were a far more num- 



142 PATRIAKCHAL DYNASTIES 

erous assemblage of inferior or secondary ones, less 
often mentioned, and esteemed as less worthy of 
honor, bnt still recognized generally through the 
country." " Finally," says he, " the Pantheon con- 
tained a host of mere local gods or genii, every 
town, and almost every village of Babylonia being 
under the protection of its own particular divinity. 
But it would be impossible to give a complete ac- 
count of this vast and complicated system. The 
subject is still but partially worked out by cuneiform 
scholars, and the difficulties in the way of under- 
standing it are very great." 

Not only so; both the ''Book of Funeral Rites," 
and all the monuments of Egypt, declare the same 
thing as to the state of religion in the region of the 
Nile, at the remotest date to which students have 
been able to go. 

In China, the system of ancestral worship, even 
during the Cheu dynasty, which began 1,122 B. C, 
was most elaborate and minute, being as thoroughly 
crystalized at that time as at the present day. 

It will not be necessary to speak of the religions 
of India, Greece, Mexico, Peru, and other ancient 
nations, as they all seem to have passed through 
very similar stages. 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 143 

In view of such facts, may we not most confi- 
dently hold that thousands of years must have been 
required for the primitive Monotheism to die out, 
and these varied systems of Polytheism to rise, de- 
velop, and become elaborate and complicated, even 
crystalized, in nations so many and remote from 
each other ? 

Lastly, though physiology is silent as to the age 
of the race, it is not so as to the length of indivi- 
dual life — which is an essential part of this discus- 
sion — and, therefore, it may also come forward with 
its testimony. 

Physiology treats of the organs of animal life, 
their functions, growth, and decay. The laws 
governing these things, so far as ascertained, seem to 
forbid the idea that men were ever able to live be- 
yond two hundred years. Generally, in less than 
half that time, the vital organs lose their vigor, the 
best eyes become blir^d, the best ears deaf, and the 
best teeth that ever grew worn down to the roots. 
Then, unless we suppose some wonderful change to 
have taken place in the material or construction of 
our bodies, those glorious old antediluvian patriarchs 
would have been over six or seven hundred years of 
their lives "sans eyes, sans ears, sans teeth, sans 



144 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

€verythiiig," burdens to themselves, and objects of 
pitj^ to their people! 

Familiaritj with an idea does a great deal towards 
reconciling us to it, but it is in reality as easy for us 
to conceive of men extraordinarily large as of men 
extraordiaarily old. Let us now present the propo- 
sition to ourselves in this unfamiliar manner, and 
see what will be the result. It is a simple question 
of proportion. We will take ninety years as the 
age of men now, and six feet as their height. Then 
as ninety is to nine hundred and thirty, the age of 
Adam, so is six feet to his height, equal to sixty-two 
feet! Keeping up the symmetry of his person, his 
waist was thirty odd feet around, and his foot eight 
feet long — requiring one hundred yards of cloth for 
a suit of clothes, four ox hides for a pair of boots, 
and a wagon load of provisions for a dinner ! ! If 
such were the ordinary men of '"' those days," what 
were the '"giants?"* 

I here close my arguments with the profound con- 
viction that our venerable Scriptures furnish a solid 
foundation on which we may rest in regard to the 

* Double the ordinary size, age, weight, or strength, would be 
marvelous, much beyond that, supernatural. Eleven feet is the 
highest man of whom I have any reliable information. 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 145 

age of man, both as individuals, and as a race. 
Though my scheme of interpretation may not be 
entirely free from diificulties and mistakes, it is in the 
main correct, and can never be overthrown by bring- 
ing objections against particular parts ; but it nmst 
stand or fall as a whole. 

The argument is accumulative, one, and indivis- 
ible, having the verb lived for its pedestal. 

Objections Answered. 

The following objections are here given as speci- 
mens of those which may be brought against my 
scheme of interpretation : 

\st^ " Was the dynasty of Enoch translated ?" 
By no means. Enoch, the head of the house, 
^Svalked with God" sixty-five years, when God took 
him ; after which, his house, or regular successors, 
walked with God three hundred more, when it was 
succeeded by that of Methuselah. I see no special 
difficulty here. 

2nc?, ''Did the whole dynasty of Noah enter the 
ark?" Not at all. Only the Noah who was its chief 
at the time of the flood. 

3rcZ, ''If the verb lived implies death, as used in 
the tables, then did not Terah die in Ur at seventy 



146 PATKIARCHAL DYNASTIES 

years of age, instead of in Haran?" Genesis xi. 
26 to 32. 

Answer. He ceased to live in JJr at that time. 
Only this first part of his life was on the registers 
of Ur. His headship terminated at seventy, which 
is all that is demanded of the verb. 

4tth\ " Could scholars of every grade overlook all 
these things for so many ages, and such important 
truths remain concealed till discovered by yourself?" 
This objection makes truth a monopoly, stops all 
progress, and upholds every error that ever existed. 
It is scarcely worth a serious reply. Facts and ar- 
guments are everything in a question of this kind; 
authority nothing. Study has corrected many pe- 
culiar notions, and is destined to correct many more. 

5M, " The Septuagint version supplies all the 
time required by established facts, and its dates are 
followed by many eminent men." I answer, it is 
wanting in authority, and produces more confusion 
in the main, if we count by births, then the Hebrew 
text. It relieves its adherents somewhat as to the 
duration of the race, but plunges them into inextri- 
cable difficulties in other respects. 

Qth^ ''The Bible does not pretend to furnish data 
for chronological purposes, and, therefore, every 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 14:7 

system based upon it. is fallacious." I deny the as- 
sertion. Whj^j then, does it give a regular series of 
dates from Adam to the Captivity, or burden itself 
with so many figures ? 

7^A, " The dynastic scheme, which allows only 
14,376 years for the existence of man, fails to meet 
the case ; for modern discoveries claim hundreds of 
thousands." I deny the claim. It is as yet an as- 
sumption only; the proof is still wanting. On the 
contrary, I assert that the 14,376 years fills every 
demand of history and science. Again, it should be 
remembered that the chronology of the Scriptures 
begins, not with the creation of man (chap. i. 27), 
but with Adam, the father of Seth (chap. v. 3.) All 
the history of the race prior to him, if any, is left 
dateless, and opens a question into which I have not 
pretended to enter. On this point, I wait for fur- 
ther liglit. Neither is it my province to reconcile 
the Bible with modern discoveries, but to show its 
teachings as -to the ages of the ancient patriarchs, 
together with the period of time which elapsed be- 
tween the father of Seth and the birth of Abraham. 
I have laboured to correct a general misapprehension 
as regards these two points alone, without turning 
aside to other things. Truths reconcile themselves. 



1 



148 



PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 



8M, ^'The djiiastic mode of interpretation is too 
complicated, and not in accordance with the first 
impression or obvious meaning of the language em- 
ployed in the tables." 

Answer. There is a dangerous fallacy in this fa- 
miliar axiom. It holds good only of things in them- 
selves plain or simple ; but as to such complex mat- 
ters as the creation, the flood, geology, astronomy, 
chronology, history, and the like, first impressions, 
obvious meanings, and popular opinions, are invari- 
ably wrong, and have to be corrected by a careful 
collection of facts, and scientific processes of reason- 
ing. According to the obvious meaning of the re- 
cord, the heavens and the earth w^ere created in six 
ordinary days, the whole globe was submerged to 
the top of the highest mountains, and every living 
thing outside of the ark was drowned in Noah's 
flood. According to first impressions the sun rises 
and sets, the earth is fiat or square; light and dark- 
ness, heat and cold, are equally forces of nature : 
but the learned know better. 

When mountains seem to revolve, trees to walk, 
or men to live 1,000 years, we should at once suspect 
an optical illusion. Again, our scheme of chron- 
ology is not particularly complicated; not more so 



FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 149 

than the nature of the subject requh^es. It is only 
new and startling; a little familiarity with it will 
relieve the difficulty. 

G^A, " Could God have allowed the world of man- 
kind to remain without the Saviour and the gospel 
for such a long time as twelve thousand five hundred 
years?" 

Answer. On the same principles that He could 
leave it four thousand. Men have walked with God 
in all ages ; He has never '4eft Himself without wit- 
ness/' and ''is no respecter of persons; but in every 
nation and age he that feareth Him and worketh 
righteousness is accepted of Him." I have no means 
of satisfactorily answering this and many like ques- 
tions, and I am, moreover, unable to see how they 
bear on points relating to matters of fact. To study 
the Bible not less, but history and the sciences more, 
might remove this class of difficulties from pious 
minds. 

10th, To those infidels who object to the Bible 
because of the length of the patriarchal life and tlie 
shortness of its chronology, I would recommend this 
little book. After they have read it carefully, their 
respect for the Bible may increase, and they may feel 
more inclined to study it for themsehes. H so, they 
10 



150 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES. 

will find it a very different book from what they 
have supposed, and be greatly benefitted by it. 

CojsrcLusioi^. 

I here bring my labors to a close. I have studied 
and written in the interest of tinith alone. I give 
the result to the public in the hope that it may 
profit all classes. It is only an outline of a vast 
picture. The filling up I leave to other and abler 
hands, to the mighty host of earnest workers now 
in the field. 

Columbus showed us the New World, the Bible 
shows us the Old — and a grand Old World it is — 
with a history stretching across a space of at least 
ten thousand five hundred years. 

In process of time, the nations contemporaneous 
with its patriarchal dynasties in all parts of the earth 
will come forth from their long sleep of oblivion, and 
take up their positions on the huge canvas with every 
limb and muscle standing out in bold relief, the 
heritage of future generations. May a rich reward 
await every one who aids in its completion. 



I 



APPENDIX 



THE following extract is taken from a review of 
Dr. Giistave Schlegel's recent great work on 
Chinese Uranography, published in the November- 
December number of the "Chinese Recorder and 
Missionary Journal," Shanghai, 1875 : 

'^A sonorous title is perhaps a fit prelude to a re- 
markable book, and such we think the w^ork before 
us may fairly claim to be. The gifted author is 
known by reputation to many China residents from 
his able contributions to the local periodicals. The 
present is no ephemeral production, being the out- 
come of continuous investigation, prolonged through 
a series of years. The object of the work may be 
stated in brief to be — to trace to their source the 
facts of Uranography, and to give some account of 
their raison cC etre,^^ 

Dr. Schlegel is not the first who has attempted 
an interpretation of the quaint figures with which 



152 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES. 

western science has been pleased to tapestry the 
starry vault above our heads; but in the theorj i 
which he has put forward in elucidation, we believe 
he is quite original. | 

In developing this theory, it is very evident he 
has not been unduly influenced by consequences ; 
but following it up to its legitimate resu.lt, he has 
arrived at the notable conclusion, that the names 
of the constellations on the Chinese sphere indicate 
an antiquity of nearly 17,000 j^ears before the Chris- 
tian era. Where all preceding theorists may be 
said to have failed, it is but fair that we should give 
a hearing to an authority of Dr. Schlegel's standing. 
We venture, therefore, to trace the steps by which 
he has arrived at this result; and preliminary to 
this we may state his four cardinal propositions : 

Ist^ The names on our celestial globes, as derived 
from the Egyptians and Greelvs, are, with some few 
exceptions, utterly inapplicable to the circumstances 
of the ancient nations to whom they have been 
generally attributed. 

2/16?, The names of the constellations on the 
Chinese sphere correspond exclusively to the condi- 
tion of the Chinese. 

Zrdj Nearly all the names of the Chinese asterisms 



APPENDIX. 153 

being found on our western globes, they must have 
been borrowed from the Chinese by western nations, 
which have since added some new constellations of 
their own. 

4zfA, The antiquity of Chinese Uranography is 
corroborated by the testimony of Chinese tradition 
and history, as also by the researches of European 
geologists. 

The first of these propositions w^e may pass over 
without much misgiving; or at least take it for 
granted, and proceed to the consideration of the 
second. Here we are met by an anomaly at the 
outset, which has proved a sore puzzle to all Dr. 
Schlegel's predecessors. We may state it more 
intelligibly to Europeans by using our familiar signs 
of the zodiac rather than the Chinese names. Thus 
with us Gajpricormis represents the winter solstice, 
Aries the vernal equinox. Cancer the summer solstice, 
and Libra the autumnal equinox; corresponding in 
rotation with the north, west, south, and east. 

The Chinese on the contrary are unanimously per- 
sistent in giving the rotation thus: Cajpricorniis for 
winter — in the north ; Libra for spring — in the west ; 
Cancer for summer — in the south; and Aries for 
autumn — in the east. 



154 PATRIARCHAL DYKASTIES. 

This arrangement is no modern institution with 
the Chinese, for the very earliest astronomical notices 
they have handed down to us are in the same (to us) 
grotesque attitude. In the infancy of society, when 
they first began rudely to divide the sphere into four 
parts for the convenience of agriculture, these were 
termed Kucei, the '^Tortoise," roughly covering our 
Sagittarius^ Capricornus and Aquarius^ and assigned 
to the north, or winter; Hov, the '^ Tiger," standing 
for Pisces^ Aries ^ and Taurus^ assigned to the east, 
or autumn ; ISTeaou, the " Bird," for Gemini^ Cancer ^ 
and Leo^ assigned to the south, or summer ; and Lung, 
the ''Dragon," for Virgo ^ Lihra, and 8cor2no^ as- 
signed to the spring and the east. 

It will be seen that the great difficulty here is, 
that while Cajyricornus and Cancer hold their natural 
positions, those of Aries and Lihra are mutually 
reversed. As astronomical observations advanced, 
and each of these quarters became subdivided into 
seven parts, thus forming the zodiac of twenty-eight 
constellations, the same theory was still preserved, 
as it is to the present day. An able Sinalogue re- 
marks on this question: "This discrepancy does not 
seem, however, to trouble the minds of the Chinese 
at all, and we may safely leave it unexplained." 



APPENDIX. 155 

Another indication of the signs of the seasons is 
found in the beginning of the Shoo King^ one of the 
oldest Chinese documents extant. We read there 
that the emperor* (?) "commanded the second bro- 
ther, Ho^ to reside at the Bright Yalley, and there 
respectfully to receive as a guest the rising sun, and 
to adjust and arrange the labors of the spring. He 
said^ ' The star is in Neaou ; you may thus exactly 
determine mid-spring.' * * * JJe further com- 
manded the third brother, Hie^ to reside at Nom- 
Jceaou^ and arrange the transformation of the sum- 
mer, and respectfully to observe the extreme limit 
of the shadoio. * * * * B^e said^ ' The star is 
Eo ; you may thus exactly determine mid-summer.' 
He separately commanded the second brother, Ho^ 
to reside at the West, and there respectfully to con- 
voy the setting sun, and to adjust and arrange the 
completing labom^s of the autumn. He said^ '"The 
star is Heu ; you may thus exactly determine mid- 
autumn.' He further commanded the third brother, 
Hie^ to reside in the northern region, and there to 
adjust and examine the changes of the winter. He 
said^ 'The star is Maou; thus you may exactly de- 
termine mid- winter.' " 

* Taou^ as heretofore supposed ; but Dr. S. disputes tliis, and 
regards these commands as an ancient tradition. 



156 PATRIARCHAL DYJ^-ASTIES. 

In this extract we find the names of four stars 
given — i.e., JVeaou, Ho, Heu, and 3faoii, — or, sub- 
stituting the more modern names for Neaou and Ho, 
we have Sing, Fang, Heu, and Maou, pointing out 
respectively the equinoxes and solstices. But how 
these stars indicate the terms in question— in what 
position or at what hour — has hitherto baffled all 
expositors, both native and foreign, satisfactorily to 
explain. 

After a summary view of the various theories that 
have been proposed, Dr. Schlegel proceeds to ex- 
pound his own, whicli amounts to something like 
this : The inadequacy of every scheme that has been 
proposed to make this legend synchronize with the 
repoited time of the Emperor Yaou, shows it to be 
not a contemporary record, but a tradition handed 
down from remote antiquity. As to the manner in 
which the four stars above named are to point out 
their respective terms, he professes to follow lite- 
rally the guidance of Vaoii^s commission. At spring, 
the astronomer is told "respectfully to receive as a 
guest the rising sun," implying sunrise as the time 
for observation ; at the autumn term, the orders are 
" respectfully to convoy the setting sun," implying 
sunset as the time of observation; mid-summer was 



APPENDIX. 157 

to be determined bj ''the extreme length of the 
shadow," huplymg noon as the time of observation ; 
and mid-winter w^as to be determined by the culmi- 
nation of the star Maou^ thus implying midnight as 
the time of observation. Having fixed on the mode 
of operation, it is obvious that the secular displace- 
ment of the seasons by precession, will not vitiate 
the theory ; and it only reinains to ascertain how 
the year stood in regard to the sidereal sphere, at 
the time the constellations were named. This Dr. 
Schleofel professes to have done bv an elaborate and 
critical analysis of the names of all the asterisms 
known to Chinese astronomy. 

The conclusion to which he is led by this investi- 
gation, is that the cradle of astral science was, in 
China, somewhere about the 35th degree of north 
latitude and that the star Keii^ or /3 Aquarii, culmi- 
nated at midnight on the winter solstice, and the star 
Fang^ or ;r Scorpionis, consequently marked the 
vernal equinox. 

By calculation he finds that when these events 
took place, the equinoctial colure intersected the 
equator about 250 degrees in arrear of its present 
position. The star Fang would then rise due east 
at 5 a, 711. on the morning of the vernal equinox ; 



158 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES. 

and Maou^ or the Pleiades, would set with the sun, 
being consequently invisible, on the evening of the 
autumnal equinox. There is a curious phenomenon 
attendant on this position, which Dr. Schegel dpes 
not fail to press into his service; that is, on the 
vernal equinox in question, the star x Librae, which 
would rise with the sun, bears the Chinese name 
/zA, or the '^sun" star; while A Tauri, that would 
set with the sun on the day of the autumnal equinox, 
bears the Chinese name of Yue^ or the "Ifaou 
star." 

The next step was to ascertain at what period the 
above phenomena took place, which is a simple 
question of calculating the precession of the equi- 
noxes. Thus, 250 degrees = 90,000 seconds, which 
divided by 50,2563^^ (the annual precession,) gives a 
quotient of 17,908 years, since the vernal equinox 
was in the neighborhood of Antares. But this is 
not all ; for it is found that the precession is more 
rapid now than it was in the days of yore; which re- 
quires 808 years to be added to the above number, 
making altogether 18,716 years. Then deducting 
the eighteen centuries of the Christian era, the re- 
sult will be 16,916 B. C. as the date of the founda- 
tion of Chinese Uranography. " We have thus en- 



APPENDIX. 159^ 

deavored/' says the reviewer, ^'to give, as concisely 
as practicable, an outline of the system to the 
elucidation of which Dr, Schlegel has devoted some 
940 quarto pages. The work is a perfect thesaurus 
of information regarding the astrology and astro- 
nomy of the ancients, illustrated by a profusion of 
interesting matter relating to the history, habits and 
customs of the Chinese. That he has brought a 
vast amount of learning to bear on his subject, is 
apparent to the most superficial reader; that he has 
discovered many curious facts, is beyond dispute ; 
and that he has succeeded in pulling to pieces the 
various schemes that have been thought out for the 
explanation of the anomalies of Chinese astronomy 
is perfectly true; yet we confess the evidence ad- 
duced is of such a voluminous and complex character, 
that we have not gone over it wdth that care neces- 
sary to render a decided opinion of any great value." 
The work is just issued, in French. Only that por- 
tion of the review which gives the contents is tran- 
scribed above, for the purpose of showing the kind 
of questions tliat constantly arise out of Chinese 
antiquities. I have myself formed no opinions as to 
the merits of Dr. Schlegel's theory, and, of course, 
am not responsible for those of the reviewer. 



160 PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES. 

The following extract is ' taken from '^LittelVs 
Living Age,'' N"o. 1641, jSTovember 20, 1875: 

The Astronomy of the Babylonians. 

"The astronomical science of the ancient Baby- 
lonians and their pupils, the Assyrians, was neither 
so profound nor so contemptible as has often been 
maintained. I^ow that we are able to read the 
native records written in the cuneiform or wedge- 
shaped character, we find that the progress made at 
a very early period in mapping out the sky, in "com- 
piling a calendar, and above all, in observing the 
phenomena of the heavens, was really wonderful, 
considering the scanty means they possessed of effect- 
ing it. Certainly their astronomy w^as mixed up 
with all kinds of astrological absurdities ; but this 
did not prevent them from being persistent and 
keen observers, whose energy in the cause of know- 
ledge is not undeserving of imitation even in the 
present day. 

" The originators of astronomy in Chaldea, as in- 
deed of all other sciences, art and culture there, were 
not the Semitic Babylonians, but a people who are 
now generally termed Accadians, and who spoke an 
agglutinative language. They had come from the 



APPENDIX. 161 

mountains of Elam, or Snsiana, on the east, bringing 
with them the rudiments of writing and civilization. 
They found a cognate race already settled in Chal- 
dea, and in conjunction with the latter they built 
the great cities of Babylonia, whose ruins still attest 
their power and antiquity. 

^'Somewhere between 3000 and 4000 B. C, the 
Semites entered the country from the east, and grad- 
ually contrived to conquer the whole of it. It is 
probable the conquest was concluded about 2000 B. 
C. At all events, Accadian became a dead language 
two or three centuries later; but as the Semitic in- 
vaders owed almost all the civilization they possessed 
to their more polished predecessors, it remained the 
language of literature, like Latin in the middle ages, 
down to the last days of the Assyrian empire. 

^'Astronomy w^as included in the branches of science 
borrowed by the Semitic Babylonians from the Ac- 
cadians. Consequently their astronomical records 
contain many words which belong to the old lan- 
guage, while most of the stars bear Accadian and 
not Semitic names. Even where the Assyrio-Baby- 
lonians had a technical term of their own, like kas- 
Htu^ ''conjunction," they continued to icrite the old 
Accadian word rihcmna^ of which kasvitii was a 



162 PATRIARCHAL DYKASTTES. 

translation, though they probably pronounced it kas- 
ritu^ just as we pronounce viz. ^namely.' 

" The oldest Chaldean astronomical records of which 
we know anything are contained in a great work called 
^ The Observations of Bel,' in seventy books, compiled 
for a certain king, Sargon of Agan6, in Babylonia, 
before 1700 B. C, and of which w^e possess later 
copies or editions, made for the library of Sardana- 
palus at Nineveh. The catalogue of this work shows 
that a great part of it was purely astrological; other 
books, however, were more scientific. Thus, there 
was one on the conjunction of the sun and moon ; 
another on comets, or, as they are called, 'stars 
with a corona in front and a tail behind;' a third 
on the movements of Mars ; a fourth on the move- 
ments of Yenus, and a fifth on the pole star. The 
catalogue concludes with a curious intimation to the 
student, who is told to write down the number of 
the tablet or book he wishes to consult, and the lib- 
rarian will thereupon hand it to liim. The larger 
portion of the work itself has been recovered, though 
some of the tablets belonging to it still lie under the 
soil of Kouyunjik, and a good part of the details 
which follow is extracted from this primitive Baby- 
lonian treatise. The Accadians seem to have begun 



APPENDIX. 163 

their astronomical observations before they left 
Elam, since the meridian was placed in that country, 
while the old mythology made ''the mountain of 
the east " the pivot on which the sky rested. This 
will account for the large number of eclipses re- 
corded in the ''Observations of Bel," which imply 
a corresponding antiquity for the commencement of 
such records. These records were carefully kept, 
as there were state observatories in most of the 
Babylonian and Assyrian to^vns — at Ur, Agane, Nin- 
eveh, and Arbela, for instance — and (at all events in 
later times) the astronomers vojol had to send fort- 
nightly reports to the king. It is to the Accadians 
that we owe both the signs of the zodiac and the 
days of the week. The heaven was divided into 
four parts, and the passage of the sun through these 
marked the four seasons of the year," etc., etc. 



164 



PATRIARCHAL DYNASTIES 



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FROM ADAM TO ABRAHAM. 



165 



Dates at vjhich 


different eras hegin 


Julian Period, 


4713 B. C 


Alexandria, 


Olympiad, . 


776 '' 


x\ntioch, 


Eome, 


753 " 


Chinese Cj^cle, . 


Jewisii, 


3761 '^ 


Indian last Kaliyug 


First Canicular, 


2785 '' 


Hegirah, 


Constantinople, 


5509 " 





B. C. 5503 
" 5493 

" 2277 
, " 3101 
A. D. 622 



